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MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday that Ukraine’s army had launched a fresh offensive in the Russian Kursk border region, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed Kyiv troops fighting on Russian soil.
Thursday marks six months since Kyiv stormed across the Russian border in a shock ground assault, capturing dozens of Russian border settlements and swathes of territory.
Russia has since been clawing back ground, but Ukraine sees its continued hold on parts of the area as a key bargaining chip in any future peace talks between the two sides.
Russia’s defense ministry said Thursday its troops had “foiled an attempted counter-offensive by the Ukrainian armed forces.”
It said the new fighting was around the villages of Ulanok and Cherkasskaya Konopelka, southeast of the regional hub of Sudzha, which is under Ukrainian control.
The area is about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the Ukrainian border.
Russia said Ukraine had deployed two mechanized battalions, tanks and armored vehicles in the attempted attack.
There has been no comment on the fresh offensive from officials in Kyiv.
But Zelensky on Thursday praised his troops fighting in the Kursk region and issued several units with state awards.
“The occupier can and should be beaten on its territory,” he said in a social media post.
“The Kursk operation clearly explains the meaning of the principle of ‘peace through strength’,” he said, referring to a message he has been promoting to secure ongoing military support from Ukraine’s western partners.

Russian soldiers captured
The Ukrainian military said earlier it had captured 909 Russian soldiers during the six-month offensive there.
“We have significantly replenished our exchange fund — hundreds and hundreds of Russian soldiers whom we are exchanging to bring Ukrainians back from captivity,” Zelensky said in an evening video address.
On Wednesday, each side released 150 captured soldiers in the latest prisoner-of-war exchange.
Russian authorities have faced simmering discontent from Kursk locals, who have seen family members trapped on the opposite side of the front line.
In a meeting with the region’s governor on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the situation there was “very difficult.”
Ukraine’s shock incursion — the first onto Russian territory by a foreign army since World War II — was an embarrassing setback for the Kremlin, almost three years into its full-scale offensive.
The Ukrainian military spokesperson for its forces in Kursk, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, told AFP via phone on Thursday that “a little more than 1,500 people” were still living in part of the region now under its control.
Kyiv says the ground it holds in Kursk will be an important bargaining chip in any future peace negotiations with Russia, whose forces have been making steady gains across the front line in eastern Ukraine.

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order on Thursday to sanction the International Criminal Court for targeting the United States and its allies, such as Israel, a White House official said.
The order will place financial and visa sanctions on individuals and their family members who assist in ICC investigations of US citizens or US allies, said the official.
The move by Trump comes after US Senate Democrats last week blocked a Republican-led effort to sanction the ICC in protest at its arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister over Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Netanyahu is currently visiting Washington.
The ICC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The court has taken measures to shield staff from possible US sanctions, paying salaries three months in advance, as it braced for financial restrictions that could cripple the war crimes tribunal, sources told Reuters last month.
In December, the court’s president, judge Tomoko Akane, warned that sanctions would “rapidly undermine the Court’s operations in all situations and cases, and jeopardize its very existence.”
This is the second time the court has faced US retaliation as a result of its work. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the ICC’s investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.
The 125-member ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression against the territory of member states or by their nationals. The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.