Russia ‘getting what it deserves,’ Ukraine says, after launching counterattack in border region

(CNN) — Ukraine has launched a counterattack in the southern Russian border region of Kursk, warning that Russia is “getting what it deserves.”

Andrii Kovalenko, the head of the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, an official body, said Ukrainian forces had launched surprise attacks against Russian forces in several locations across Kursk, months after launching its incursion in the region.

In a short Telegram post Sunday, the head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, Andriy Yermak, said: “Kursk region, good news, Russia is getting what it deserves.”

The Ukrainian military first launched an incursion into Kursk in August and has held much of the territory it took, despite efforts by Russian and recently deployed North Korean troops to drive Ukrainian units back across the border.

The Russian defense ministry on Monday claimed that its forces had repelled Kyiv’s counterattack.

The ministry said that Russian units, supported by aviation and artillery, launched a “decisive” response and destroyed Ukraine’s main forces that had gathered near the village of Berdin, some 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the border.

It added that Russian forces “prevented the Ukrainian Armed Forces from breaking through.”

CNN is unable to verify battlefield reports.

The Kursk offensive – the first ground invasion of Russia by a foreign power since World War II – took Russia and Ukraine’s allies by surprise when it was launched. Kyiv’s troops advanced quickly, though Russia eventually began to push their forces back; the line of control has not changed dramatically in recent months.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his nightly address Monday that Ukraine was maintaining a buffer zone in the Kursk region. He said that Kyiv’s troops were “actively destroying” the Russian military, and that since the start of the incursion into Kursk 5 months ago nearly 15,000 Russian troops had been killed.

Zelensky emphasized that by deploying its “strong units” to fight in Kursk region Russia could no longer send them elsewhere to such places as “Donetsk, Sumy, Kharkiv, or Zaporizhzhia regions.”

On Saturday, Zelensky said that in battles near the village of Makhnovka, the Russian army lost up to a battalion of North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers. A battalion is normally several hundred troops.

Unofficial Russian military blogs, which often provide reliable reporting on the Ukraine conflict, acknowledged the fighting on Sunday. One said that the Ukrainians were pushing north towards Berdin.

“The enemy has thrown reserves into the offensive in Kursk region,” said one blog Sunday.

“For the breakthrough, the AFU covered the area with powerful radio electronic warfare systems, hampering the work of our UAVs (drones),” the blog said. “There are small arms battles, our artillery and tanks are actively working against the enemy.”

A second blog carried a similar account, saying the offensive had begun from the Sudzha area, but the Ukrainians had also landed paratroopers and intensified fighting in other directions.

“In this offensive the enemy uses mine clearance trawls, tanks and other armored vehicles,” the blog said, adding that frosty ground was enabling the attack, but that was not expected to last. It added that Russian bombers were in action.

Ukrainian and Western assessments say that some 11,000 North Korean troops are deployed in the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces occupy swathes of territory after staging the cross-border incursion.

A senior Ukrainian officer told CNN that the Russians had begun a heavy bombardment of the town of Sudzha, which the Ukrainians took last August.

Col. Oleksii Dmytrashkivskyi, press officer for the military commandant’s office in the Kursk region, told CNN there were swarms of drones in the area and constant explosions, with missiles landing directly on the town.

“The enemy is dismantling the city floor by floor, block by block, trying to clear the city before the main assault,” Dmytrashkivskyi said.

He said civilians holed up in a boarding school wanted to leave but Russia had not consented to their transportation. “There are currently approximately 2,000 people there. About 39 people have been killed by air and artillery strikes, and more than 100 have been wounded.”

In eastern Ukraine, the Russian military has reported advances near the town of Kurakhove, a critical area of the battlefield in Donetsk region.

The unofficial Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState said that Russian forces had advanced in Kurakhove and Toretsk, and published video of a column of Russian vehicles entering the village of Yelyzavetivka before coming under heavy fire.

A Russian military blog claimed that a special forces detachment had raised the Russian flag on the western outskirts of Kurakhove.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declined to say when Russia would recapture the southern Kursk region after a phone-in question at his year-end news conference last month.

“Our guys are fighting, there is a battle going on right now, and serious battles. It is unclear why, there was no military sense in the Ukrainian Armed Forces entering the Kursk region, or holding on there now as they are doing, throwing their best units there to be slaughtered,” Putin said.

One possible motive behind Kyiv’s decision to enter Russia was to improve its hand ahead of any potential future ceasefire negotiations.

Incoming US President Donald Trump has said he would end the war “in 24 hours,” but not how, and has demurred over future military aid to Ukraine.

Last week, Zelensky said that the North Korean military has been facing severe losses and accused Russia of sending them to the battlefield with “minimal protection.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Rob Picheta, Gawon Bae, Victoria Butenko, Edward Szekeres, Kostyantyn Hak and Anna Chernova contributed reporting.