Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia has 50,000 soldiers stationed in Kursk

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his military’s ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is currently holding 50,000 Russian soldiers.

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

According to the Institute for the Study of War, a US non-profit organization, Russia had 11,000 troops stationed in Kursk when Ukraine began the shock attack in early August.

However, a report in the New York Times indicates that Moscow managed to increase its troops in Kursk without having to withdraw its soldiers from Ukraine.

The newspaper said North Korean troops were also stationed in Kursk as part of an impending Russian counteroffensive.

In his speech, Zelensky said he was informed by his commander-in-chief, General Oleksandr Syrskyy, who announced earlier on Monday that he had conducted an inspection of Ukrainian units stationed in Kursk.

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

Gen. Syrskyy said separately that without Ukrainian forces in Kursk, “tens of thousands of enemies of Russia’s best assault units would have stormed Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region,” a key battlefield since the conflict erupted a decade ago.

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

The New York Times, citing both unnamed American and Ukrainian officials, puts the number of Russian and North Korean troops being prepared for the reported counteroffensive in Kursk at 50,000.

“A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has strengthened its forces without having to withdraw soldiers from eastern Ukraine – its main battlefield priority – allowing Moscow to apply pressure on multiple fronts at once,” it said it in the newspaper.

Both Ukraine and the United States say more than 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been sent to Russia. Moscow neither confirms nor denies that troops from North Korea, a close ally since the Soviet era, are stationed 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 at a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Pyongyang in June.

North Korea and Russia have grown ever closer since Moscow was largely isolated internationally following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The US has repeatedly accused Pyongyang of sending large amounts of military equipment to Russia, including ballistic missiles and launch vehicles.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte recently suggested that Pyongyang was Receive military technology and other support from Moscow to help him evade 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 it had a telephone conversation with President Vladimir Putin.

The call, first reported by The Washington Post on Sunday, is said to have taken place on Thursday. Trump is said to have warned the Russian president against an escalation of the war in Ukraine and mentioned America’s extensive military presence in Europe.

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