Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) —
Ukraine’s military chief said Tuesday that the country’s troops had taken control of nearly 1,300 square kilometers (500 square miles) of Russia’s Kursk region since their surprise incursion three weeks ago.
Brigadier General Oleksandr Syrsky also said that Ukraine had captured 594 Russian prisoners during its operation. His statements could not be independently confirmed.
According to him, the Kursk incursion attracted Russian troops from elsewhere, diluting them in other areas. “They are trying to create a defensive ring around our offensive group of troops and are planning counteroffensive actions,” Syrskyi said. The conquered territory is about the size of Los Angeles.
Fighting in the region has raised concerns about the dangers to the Kursk nuclear power plant, said International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi, who visited the plant on Tuesday.
“There is now a risk of a nuclear incident here,” Grossi was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. “Today I was told about several cases of drone attacks on the territory, on the plant’s facilities. On the ground, I saw traces of these attacks.”
But the plant is now operating “in a mode very close to normal,” he said.
Syrskyi’s claim of territorial control comes hours after Ukraine came under a second consecutive barrage of nighttime air and missile attacks from Russia.
Five people were killed and 16 injured in the attacks, which involved 81 drones, as well as cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. He said four people were killed, but the governor of the Zaporizhia region later said a fifth person died from burns in the attacks.
“We will undoubtedly respond to Russia for this and all other attacks. Crimes against humanity cannot go unpunished,” Zelensky wrote on X.
The Kursk operation, the largest incursion into Russia since World War II, has forced some 130,000 residents to evacuate their homes. Russia has sent reinforcements to the region, but it is unclear how much these moves could weaken Russian positions on Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine’s president said Tuesday that Russia would not relocate troops to Kursk from Donetsk, the eastern Ukrainian region that is the center of the war and where Russia is slowly advancing. However, the Ukrainian president said the Kursk operation had prevented Russia from conquering territory in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, west of Kursk.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Tuesday that Ukraine had suffered heavy losses in Kursk (6,600 soldiers killed or wounded) and that more than 70 tanks and dozens of armored vehicles had been destroyed. These figures could not be independently confirmed.
In the Kiev region, which has been facing power outages after Monday’s attack that targeted energy facilities across the country, five air raid alerts were issued overnight. The regional administration said air defenses destroyed all the drones and missiles but falling debris sparked forest fires.
Following the bombing of Ukraine by more than 100 missiles and a similar number of drones on Monday, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that “energy infrastructure has once again become a target for Russian terrorists” and urged Ukraine’s allies to provide it with long range weapons and permission to use them on targets inside Russia.
“The allies try not to tell me about it. But I keep talking about it. In general, that’s it. The Olympics are over, but the ping-pong continues,” Zelensky said.
President Joe Biden called Monday’s Russian attack on energy infrastructure “outrageous” and said he had “reprioritized U.S. air defense exports to go first to Ukraine.” He also said the U.S. is “sending energy equipment to Ukraine en masse to repair its systems and strengthen the resilience of Ukraine’s energy grid.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said the attacks used “long-range precision air and sea weapons and strike drones against critical energy infrastructure that supports the functioning of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex. All designated targets were hit.”
Russian officials reported that four Ukrainian missiles were shot down over the Kursk region.
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Jim Heintz in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.
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