Volodymyr Zelensky says Russia has 50,000 troops in Kursk

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said his military’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is now holding down 50,000 Russian troops.

In his daily address to the nation, Zelensky said the operation reduced Moscow’s ability to strike inside Ukraine itself. The president has long cited this as the goal of the offensive, despite skepticism from some Western allies.

According to the Institute for the Study of War, an American non-profit organization, Russia had 11,000 troops in Kursk when Ukraine began its shock intervention in early August.

However, a report in the New York Times suggests that Moscow has achieved its troop build-up in Kursk without the need to withdraw its troops from Ukraine.

The paper says North Korean troops are also being deployed in Kursk as part of an impending Russian counter-offensive.

In his speech, Zelensky said he had been briefed by his Commander-in-Chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyy, who announced earlier Monday that he had conducted an inspection of Ukrainian units stationed in Kursk.

“Our men are holding back… 50,000 of the occupier’s army personnel who, due to the Kursk operation, cannot be deployed to other Russian offensive directions on our territory,” the Ukrainian president said.

Gen Syrskyy said separately that were it not for Ukraine’s forces inside Kursk, “tens of thousands of enemies from the best Russian assault units would have stormed” Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region, a key battleground since the conflict broke out a decade ago.

Fighting continues in Donetsk, where the two sides accused each other on Monday of damaging a dam near the Ukrainian-controlled town of Kurakhove. Russian troops have been slowly advancing in the region for months towards the key city of Pokrovsk – a key supply hub for Ukrainian forces.

The New York Times, citing both unnamed U.S. and Ukrainian officials, put the number of Russian and North Korean troops ready for the reported counteroffensive at Kursk at 50,000.

“A new US assessment concludes that Russia has been massing forces without having to pull troops out of Ukraine’s east – its top battlefield priority – allowing Moscow to push on multiple fronts simultaneously,” the newspaper said.

Both Ukraine and the United States say more than 10,000 North Korean troops have been sent to Russia. Moscow neither confirms nor denies that troops from North Korea, a close ally since Soviet times, are in Kursk.

In North Korea itself, it was announced that its leader, Kim Jong un, had signed a decree ratifying a mutual defense treaty with Russia, which was approved in June at a summit in Pyongyang with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

North Korea and Russia have grown closer since Moscow found itself largely isolated internationally following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The United States has repeatedly accused Pyongyang of sending massive amounts of military hardware to Russia, including ballistic missiles and launchers.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently suggested that Pyongyang was receives military technology and other support from Moscow to help it avoid international sanctions

Elsewhere, amid much speculation about the impact of Donald Trump’s re-election victory last week, The Kremlin has denied media reports that he had a phone call with President Vladimir Putin.

The call, which was first reported by the Washington Post on Sunday, is said to have happened on Thursday. Trump is said to have warned the Russian president against escalating the war in Ukraine and mentioned the extensive US military presence in Europe.

Trump’s team told the BBC they would not comment on the president-elect’s “private calls”.