Russian troops are fighting Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region in the third day of one of the largest cross-border incursions of the war, the Russian Ministry of Defense said yesterday.
The Russian military and border guards have blocked Ukrainian forces from advancing deeper into the Kursk region in southwest Russia and the army is attacking Ukrainian combatants who are trying to advance on the area from Ukraine’s Sumy region, the ministry said.
“Attempts by individual units to break through deep into the territory in the Kursk direction are being suppressed,” it said.
Photo: Reuters
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said that as of Wednesday, Ukrainian troops had advanced as much as 10km into Russian territory, but that information was not confirmed.
Ukrainian officials have not commented on the scope of the operation around the town of Sudzha.
“The enemy has not advanced a single meter, on the contrary, it is retreating. The enemy’s equipment and combat forces are being actively destroyed. We hope that in the near future ... the enemy will be stopped,” the Kursk region’s acting deputy governor, Andrei Belostotsky, said yesterday, according to state news agency RIA-Novosti.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday described the incursion as a “large-scale provocation.”
Separately, the Ukrainian embassy in Mexico on Wednesday asked the Mexican government to arrest Putin if he attends the inauguration of Mexican president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum.
Kyiv’s delegation, which called Putin a “war criminal,” also thanked Mexico for inviting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to the ceremony on Oct. 1.
“We are confident that the Mexican government would comply in any case with the international arrest warrant by handing over the aforementioned [Putin] to the United Nations judicial body in The Hague,” the embassy said in a statement.
Additional reporting by AFP
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
RSS