Zelenskiy Says Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Has Slowed Moscow’s Eastern Advance

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends the Fourth Crimea Platform Leaders Summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2024. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends the Fourth Crimea Platform Leaders Summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2024. (Reuters)
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Zelenskiy Says Ukraine’s Kursk Incursion Has Slowed Moscow’s Eastern Advance

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends the Fourth Crimea Platform Leaders Summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2024. (Reuters)
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy attends the Fourth Crimea Platform Leaders Summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 11, 2024. (Reuters)

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday Ukraine's incursion into Russia's border region of Kursk had produced the desired result of slowing Moscow's advance on another front in the east of his country.

Zelenskiy told a conference in Kyiv that Russia's counterattack in the Kursk region had also had no major successes - contradicting President Vladimir Putin's accounts of Russian advances on both fronts.

Ukraine launched a surprise incursion in the Kursk region on Aug. 6, pushing into the Russian territory and claiming control over dozens of settlements.

"It gave the results that, frankly speaking, we counted on. In the Kharkiv region, the enemy was stopped. Their advance in the Donetsk region was slowed down, although it is very difficult there," Zelenskiy said.

Zelenskiy said that Russia had about 40,000 troops on the Kursk front, and those had begun a counterattack. "So far we have seen no serious (Russian) success," he added, during his most comprehensive public comments on the situation since the launch of the Kursk operation.

Russia's defense ministry said on Friday its troops had taken back 10 villages out of 100 that Kyiv had claimed.

Reuters has not been able to verify battlefield reports from either side independently.

PLAN FOR A 'RELIABLE PEACE'

More than 2-1/2 years since Russia's full-scale invasion, the war is at a critical juncture, with Moscow regularly pounding Ukrainian infrastructure and cities as its troops try to push back Ukraine's incursion and complete the capture of the whole of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

Zelenskiy acknowledged that the situation near the logistics hub of Pokrovsk in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region remained difficult though he said that had stabilized over the past week.

Ukraine's General Staff reported on Friday that Russian forces focused their assaults near the town of Kurakhove, about 33 km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk.

Kyiv's forces are stretched thin in the eastern Donetsk region, but the military said they had repelled 64 assaults near Kurakhove in the past day, the most intense fighting there so far this month. An additional 36 Russian assaults had been repelled near Pokrovsk, it added.

Zelenskiy has earlier described the Kursk operation as a part of his broader "victory plan" he aims to present the US President Joe Biden later this month.

"(The plan) can pave the way for a reliable peace – for the full implementation of the peace formula," Zelenskiy said on Friday.

He declined to disclose the details of the plan but said it consisted of a small number of points.

"And all these points depend on Biden's decision. Not Putin's," Zelenskiy added.

Ukraine has stepped up calls on its Western allies, in particular the United States, to allow long-range attacks into Russia, saying it is critical for its efforts to restrict Moscow's ability to attack Ukraine.

Allies have so far been reluctant to permit such strikes, citing fears Moscow will treat this as escalation.



Germans Mourn the 5 Killed and 200 Injured in the Apparent Attack on a Christmas Market

21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
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Germans Mourn the 5 Killed and 200 Injured in the Apparent Attack on a Christmas Market

21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)
21 December 2024, Bremen: Mobile barriers secure the streetcar tracks at the Christmas market in Bremen, after the Magdeburg's Christmas market attack the day before. (dpa)

Germans on Saturday mourned the victims of an apparent attack in which authorities say a doctor drove into a busy outdoor Christmas market, killing five people, injuring 200 others and shaking the public’s sense of security at what would otherwise be a time of joy and wonder.

The alleged attack Friday evening in Magdeburg, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) west of Berlin, killed a 9-year-old and four adults and injured 41 people badly enough that authorities warned the death toll could rise.

Magdeburg marked the tragedy Saturday with the tolling church bells at 7:04 p.m., the exact time of the attack in the city of roughly 240,000 people.

The driver, a 50-year-old doctor who immigrated from Saudi Arabia in 2006, surrendered to police at the scene. He’s being investigated for five counts of suspected murder and 205 counts of suspected attempted murder, prosecutor Horst Walter Nopens said at a news conference.

Among other things, investigators are looking into whether the attack could have been motivated by the suspect’s dissatisfaction with the way Germany treats Saudi refugees, Nopens said.

“There is no more peaceful and cheerful place than a Christmas market,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “What a terrible act it is to injure and kill so many people there with such brutality.”

Although Nopens mentioned the treatment of Saudi immigrants angle, authorities said Saturday that they still didn't know why the suspect drove his black BMW into the crowded market.

Police haven't publicly named the suspect, but several German news outlets identified him as Taleb A., withholding his last name in line with privacy laws, and reported that he was a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy.

Describing himself as a former Muslim, the suspect appears to have been an active user of the social media platform X, accusing German authorities of failing to do enough to combat what he referred to as the “Islamification of Europe.”

The violence shocked Germany and Magdeburg, which is the capital of the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, bringing its mayor to the verge of tears and marring the centuries-old German tradition of Christmas markets. It led several other communities to cancel their weekend Christmas markets as a precaution and out of solidarity with Magdeburg’s loss. Berlin kept its many markets open but increased its police presence at them.

Germany has suffered a string of extremist attacks in recent years, including a knife attack that killed three people and wounded eight at a festival in the western city of Solingen in August.

Friday’s attack came eight years after an extremist drove a truck into a crowded Christmas market in Berlin, killing 13 people and injuring many others. The attacker was killed days later in a shootout in Italy.

Chancellor Scholz and Interior Minister Nancy Faeser traveled to Magdeburg on Saturday, and a memorial service is to take place in the city cathedral in the evening. Faeser ordered flags lowered to half-staff at federal buildings across the country.

Verified bystander footage distributed by the German news agency dpa showed the suspect’s arrest at a tram stop in the middle of the road. A nearby police officer pointing a handgun at the man shouted at him as he lay prone, his head arched up slightly. Other officers swarmed around the suspect and took him into custody.

Thi Linh Chi Nguyen, a 34-year-old manicurist from Vietnam whose salon is in a mall across from the Christmas market, was on the phone during a break when she heard loud bangs that she thought were fireworks. She then saw a car drive through the market at high speed. People screamed and a child was thrown into the air by the car.

Shaking as she described what she had witnessed, she recalled seeing the car bursting out of the market and turning right onto Ernst-Reuter-Allee street and then coming to a standstill at the tram stop where the suspect was arrested.

The number of injured people was overwhelming.

“My husband and I helped them for two hours. He ran back home and grabbed as many blankets as he could find because they didn’t have enough to cover the injured people. And it was so cold,” she said.

The market itself was still cordoned off Saturday with red and white tape and police vans, as armed officers guarded at every entrance. Some thermal security blankets still lay on the street.