Ukraine struck an advanced Russian air-defense system in the border Kursk region, according to Ukraine’s military, shortly after the U.S. green-lit attacks over the border using long-range American ATACMS and as North Korean soldiers are expected to join front-line clashes in the area.
Kyiv struck the radar station of an S-400 air-defense system in Kursk overnight, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement on Sunday.
Russia’s Defense Ministry did not mention a Ukrainian strike on its air defenses in updates posted on Sunday, but said it had destroyed 27 drones over Kursk overnight. The Russian government has been contacted for comment via email.
The S-400 surface-to-air missile system, also known as the Triumf, is considered broadly equivalent to the U.S. military’s Patriot air-defense system. Each S-400 battery comes with a price tag of around $200 million, Sidharth Kaushal, of the London-based Royal United Services Institute defense think tank, told Newsweek last year.
Earlier this month, U.S. officials said the White House had approved the use of U.S.-supplied Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, missiles for use against targets far into Russia’s territory. They are ballistic missiles with a range of roughly 190 miles.
Russia vowed to hit back, and said late last week that it had launched a new experimental hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at central Ukraine in retaliation for “the use of American- and British-made long-range missiles against facilities on Russian territory.”
Ukraine is thought to have fired British Storm Shadow cruise missiles at Russia in recent days, although London has not officially confirmed this.
Kyiv launched a surprise incursion into Kursk in early August, and Russia has struggled to peel back Ukraine’s most significant advance into opposition territory since the start of full-scale war in February 2022, and the first ground attacks by another country on Russian soil since World War II.
Ukraine focused its efforts around the towns of Sudzha and Korenevo. Russia has retaken chunks of territory close to the latter, with Ukraine still holding Sudzha.
Moscow’s troops “recently advanced” southeast of Korenevo, the U.S.-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said on Saturday. Kyiv has reported Russian counteroffensives, which have been sluggish in wresting control over the border. But Moscow has plugged away with gains in Ukraine’s east, toward the strategic transit hub of Pokrovsk.
An unnamed senior military source in Kyiv’s General Staff told Reuters in an article published on Saturday that Ukraine had lost more than 40 percent of the territory it controlled in Kursk. At its peak, Ukrainian forces controlled roughly 531 square miles of territory, the source said, adding that this has now dropped to approximately 309 square miles.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky estimated in mid-November that around 50,000 Russian troops were fighting in Kursk. Kyiv’s top soldier, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, recently said roughly 45,000 of Moscow’s soldiers were concentrated in the region, but that the Kremlin was funneling more personnel to the area of fighting. The unnamed source told Reuters approximately 60,000 soldiers were fighting for Russia in Kursk.
South Korean, U.S. and Ukrainian intelligence have indicated that upward of 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Kursk to support Moscow’s war effort. Reports have indicated the fighters are dressed in Russian military uniforms and integrated into the Kremlin’s existing military forces.
Russia has not confirmed or denied the presence of North Korean troops in Kursk, but has signed a mutual defense pact with the secretive country’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un. Pyongyang has supplied a significant number of missiles and shipments of munitions to prop up Moscow’s war effort.
A South Korean intelligence official said earlier this week that Russia had provided air-defense equipment and “economic aid in various forms” to North Korea.
U.S. Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said on Saturday that he expected to see North Korean soldiers “engaged in combat soon.” The State Department confirmed in mid-November that North Korean soldiers were “engaging in combat operations with Russian forces” after undergoing training in how to use drones, artillery, and carry out “basic infantry operations.”
Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Rustem Umerov, told South Korean media earlier this month that North Korean soldiers had been involved in “small-scale clashes” so far.
“The first battles with North Korean soldiers open a new page of instability in the world,” Zelensky said earlier this month. “We must do everything to make this Russian step to expand the war—to really escalate it—to make this step a failure.”
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