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Ukraine's air forces shot down a Russian Su-35 fighter jet on Saturday morning, the Ukrainian military said. "This morning, on June 7, 2025, as a result of a successful Air Force operation in the Kursk direction, a Russian Su-35 fighter jet was shot down," the military said on the Telegram messenger. It gave no more details. Russian forces have not yet commented on the matter while Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The Kremlin claims that Russian President Vladimir Putin survived a massive drone attack on his helicopter last week. On Tuesday Putin was visiting the Kursk region when his helicopter was 'virtually at the epicenter of repelling a large-scale attack by the enemy's drones,' said Yury Dashkin, commander of a Russian air defense division, according to the state news agency TASS. 'Therefore, we simultaneously conducted an air defense battle and ensured the safety of the presidential helicopter’s flight in the air,' Dashkin said. The Kursk region borders Ukraine, with Moscow claiming that it had driven Ukrainian forces out of the area...

Vladimir Putin’s helicopter was forced to shoot down drones while the Russian president was aboard, a Moscow official said on Sunday. Air defence commander Maj Gen Yuri Dashkin told state television that Putin’s aircraft was involved in an “air defence battle” after finding itself in the middle of an “unprecedented Ukrainian drone assault”. The incident was said to have happened last week when the Russian leader was on a tour of the Kursk region, part of which Ukraine previously occupied. “During the period when the president was working in the Kursk region, the enemy launched an unprecedented attack with unmanned...

Ukraine said it hit a drone command unit in the Kursk region, amid reports of fresh attempts to cross into Russia. Sunday's attack on the unit was located near the Russian village of Tyotkino, according to the Ukrainian general staff. Multiple Russian military bloggers also reported that Ukrainian forces had attempted to cross into the village, posting images - as yet unverified by the BBC - of vehicles breaking through tank traps on the border. The reports come after Moscow claimed in April to have regained control of the entire region, nine months after a Ukrainian forces launched a surprise...

Russia has reported that it repelled a drone attack on Moscow as the capital city prepares to host a major military parade with foreign leaders in attendance. Russia’s air defence systems intercepted “four drones flying towards Moscow”, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said on Monday. The attack appears intended to unsettle Moscow’s preparations for events marking the end of the Great Patriotic War, commonly known as World War II elsewhere, on May 9. -snip- The Kremlin has branded Putin’s declaration of a three-day unilateral ceasefire a humanitarian gesture. Military operations will be paused during the truce, according to Russian authorities, as world...

Ukrainian forces have reportedly opened up a third vector of attack in Glushkovsky district, Kursk Oblast, this time towards the Novy Put tract. They are taking advantage of bad weather conditions. Fierce battles are reported at these three points on the map. Rain is seriously complicating drone usage.

Russia has finally ejected all Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region who invaded on orders of NATO/EU last August 6th, ending the most significant incursion into Russian territory since World War II. This has certainly removed Kursk as a pawn in peace negotiations, which Zelensky refused to accept when he met at the White House in a desperate effort to embarrass Trump into keeping the funding for Ukraine’s war against Russia. Reuters reported that Zelensky said the world did not want to wait until May 8 for Putin’s announced ceasefire in the more than three-year-old war, only for it to...

Russia's military says it has regained full control of the country's western Kursk region - a claim denied by Ukraine. Ukrainian forces have been in retreat in Kursk in recent months, facing 70,000 Russian troops and heavy drone attacks as part of Russia's drive to regain the territory. In its latest report on 25 April, the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think-tank said: "Russian forces recently advanced near the international border in Kursk Oblast [region] as part of efforts to push Ukrainian forces from their limited remaining positions in the area." The ISW also reported that "fighting...

Nearly nine months after losing chunks of the Kursk region to a surprise Ukrainian incursion, Russia announced that its troops have fully reclaimed the border territory. Ukraine denied it, saying the fighting was still ongoing. If confirmed, Moscow’s victory in Kursk would deprive Kyiv of key leverage in U.S.-brokered efforts to negotiate an end to the more than 3-year-old war by exchanging its gains for some of Russia-occupied land in Ukraine. Here are key moments of the battle for Kursk and its impact:A Ukrainian blitzUkrainian forces pushed into Kursk on Aug. 6, 2024, in a surprise attack, with battle-hardened mechanized...

Donald Trump has broken his silence after a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky at Pope Francis' funeral - and turned on Vladimir Putin. In a rant on his social media platform Truth Social he accused the Russian President of stringing him along and at the same time blamed Democrat Presidents Obama and Biden for a "mess". He wrote: "I’m just trying to clean up the mess that was left to me by Obama and Biden, and what a mess it is. With all of that being said, there was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities...

Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed on Saturday what he called the complete failure of an offensive by Ukrainian forces into Russia's Kursk region after they were expelled from the last village Moscow said they had been holding. -snip- Gerasimov also praised the North Korean officers and soldiers' contribution in Kursk, saying they had shown "high professionalism, fortitude, courage and heroism", fulfilling combat tasks "shoulder to shoulder" with Russian servicemen. North Korea sent an estimated total of 14,000 troops, including 3,000 reinforcements to replace its losses, Ukrainian officials said. Lacking armoured vehicles and drone warfare experience, they took heavy casualties but...

The former governor of Russia's Kursk region, parts of which were seized by Ukrainian forces in August 2024, has been detained and charged with embezzling money earmarked for building defences, Russia's interior ministry said on Thursday. Alexei Smirnov was head of the western region when Ukrainian troops smashed across the border in a large-scale incursion. -snip- In the first hours of Ukraine's August incursion into Kursk, Smirnov repeatedly offered assurances that the situation was under control, even as Russian border guards were left reeling and in retreat by the surprise attack.

Roughly a month after taking Sudja, Russian Forces drive Ukrainian defenders out of Guevo. Now only Olezhnia and Gornal stand in the way of a complete expulsion of Kiev forces from Kursk region. There’s no denying that the Ukrainian operation in Russia’s Kursk region was a successful adventure from the standpoint of a PR stunt.There’s also unanimous agreement that the Kiev regime burned a disproportionate amount of resources to hold the sliver of terrain for 9 months – be it tanks and armored cars, be it artillery and air defense units, be it tens of thousands of troops, maybe as...

VLADIMIR Putin's soldiers have reportedly been left with never-before-seen lung poisoning after crawling through a 10-mile gas pipeline to attack Ukraine. Russian troops were sent on the bizarre mission earlier this month through a disused pipe near Sudzha, in Russia’s Kursk region – with the goal of sneaking behind enemy lines. But not only were many of the soldiers slaughtered by Ukrainian forces, survivors are now said to be suffering from chemical pneumonitis - an acute lung inflammation caused by inhaling toxic substances. Doctors have revealed the condition appears to have worsened over time - with scans showing lungs "resembling...

Ukrainian soldiers fighting in Russia's Kursk region have described scenes "like a horror movie" as they retreated from the front lines. The BBC has received extensive accounts from Ukrainian troops, who recount a "catastrophic" withdrawal in the face of heavy fire, and columns of military equipment destroyed and constant attacks from swarms of Russian drones. The soldiers, who spoke over social media, were given aliases to protect their identity. Some gave accounts of a "collapse" as Ukraine lost Sudzha, the largest town it held. Ukrainian restrictions on travel to the front have meant it is not possible to get a...

“About 30 NATO officers were trapped in the Kursk region, according to the coordinator of the pro-Russian resistance, citing sources in the underground. Now it becomes clear why Europe was so alarmed. During the fighting in the Kursk region, according to the pro-Russian Mykolaiv resistance, about 30 career officers from NATO countries were surrounded.”

Terrible though it is, Ukraine’s forced withdrawal from Kursk makes peace negotiations with Russia more likely. Indeed had Putin not been able to drive the Ukrainian army out, he is unlikely to have even contemplated peace talks. He would have demanded that Kyiv pull out of his territory first. That would have been a huge political challenge for Zelensky, on top of all the others he faces: the idea of voluntarily withdrawing from conquered Russian land while at the same time ceding large areas of his own country to the enemy. Putin has the whip hand, and one of the...

Ukraine’s military was forced to dismiss Donald Trump’s claim that thousands of its troops are encircled in Russia’s Kursk region as “false”.Its general staff instead accused Russia of fabricating reports for “political manipulation and to exert pressure on Ukraine and its partners”, while Volodymyr Zelensky said Vladimir Putin was lying about the battlefield situation.Putin claimed on Thursday night that his forces had encircled thousands of Ukrainians in the western Kursk region, which Ukraine invaded in August, warning they would have to “surrender or die”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday called his military’s operation in Kursk Oblast a success, as the last remnants of Kyiv’s forces leave the Russian territory they have occupied since August. Ukraine shocked the world with its bold offensive operation in the summer that at its height took control of an area about the size of Los Angeles in Kursk, Russia. The idea was to distract Russian forces from advancing on the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in southeastern Ukraine, a goal Zelensky said was achieved. “I believe the mission is accomplished,” he said.

After a daring maneuver, the Russian military have completely surrounded Ukraine forces in the Kursk region. The Ukraine soldiers seemingly have been instructed to continue trying to fight on behalf of Zelenskyy. President Trump is asking Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare the lives of the Ukraine troops.