Russian armored columns and North Korean infantry have launched counterattacks against Ukrainian defenses at the northern tip of a salient carved out inside the Russian Federation, in the wake of a recent lurch by Kyiv’s troops a little closer to Moscow, official statement and battle reports said on Thursday.
Ukraine, in August, invaded its giant northern neighbor Russia to carve out a Luxembourg-sized chunk of Russian territory in Russia’s Kursk region.
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Kremlin counterattacks since then have slowly, and with heavy losses, reduced the size of the Ukraine-controlled salient inside Russia to a lozenge-shaped piece of mostly farm fields, villages, and forests about 30 kilometers (19 miles) wide and 60 kilometers (37 miles) from north to south.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin has repeatedly ordered the pocket eliminated and the Ukrainian invaders ejected from Russia – most recently with a Jan. 1 deadline – but Ukrainian defenses, though pressed, have mostly held.
According to fresh reports from both sides of the fighting lines, heavy combat has been in progress at the northern tip of the salient for the past 48 hours. Claims of who was getting the upper hand conflicted somewhat, with pro-Ukraine sources reporting big defensive successes, and pro-Russia sources saying the situation on the battlefield is unclear and dynamic.
Video released by Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade on Thursday showed a rare Russian massed armored attack with a half-dozen armored vehicles, including tanks, moving across open snowfields. All are fitted with anti-drone screens. Equipped with US-made M1A1 tanks and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, the 47th is one of the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s (AFU’s) best-armed and most combat-seasoned fighting units.
Shortage of Armored Vehicles Forces Russian Troops to Assault in Civilian Cars
Overhead reconnaissance and First Person View (FPV) drone recordings by 47th Brigade and special operations aircraft show the Russian vehicles being systematically hit with explosive and incendiary warheads, at times as the armored column passes through artillery fire.
Some images show soldiers abandoning BMD infantry fighting vehicles, a troop carrier commonly used by elite Russian airborne and marine infantry forces, and making for cover.
Grenade-dropping drones hunt the white-uniformed foot soldiers down. FPV drones impact on men lying in the snow. Some cuts showed fields heavily cratered from artillery or heavy mortar strikes.
A 47th Brigade statement said its sub-units, in cooperation with Ukrainian special operations units nearby, repelled a “massive” Russian assault that attacked in six waves with some 50 vehicles including tanks, BMP-2 and BMP infantry fighting vehicles, wheeled armored personnel carriers, and golf cart-style “buggies.” The unit claimed enemy equipment “worth tens of millions of dollars” was burned and that 45 Russian soldiers were eliminated and 53 wounded.
Kyiv Post researchers concluded the undated images were likely recorded in the Ukraine-held salient inside Russia. The geo-location group DeepState placed the combat near the village of Viktorovka, in the vicinity of the salient’s eastern base. Past open-source geo-location fixes of 47th Brigade have placed the unit in and around the village Pogrebniki, near the northern tip of the salient.
Russian milbloggers on Thursday reported heavy fighting in the vicinity of Pogrebniki with close-in firefights taking place inside the village. The popular Russian military writer Dva Majora (1.2 million subscribers) said the Ukrainian main effort was in that sector and claimed that Kyiv’s forces had carried out two major assaults there in the past 24 hours, without gaining ground. Russian forces currently were counterattacking and battles were still in progress, the pro-Moscow source said.
A situation update published by Russia’s Defense Ministry on Thursday claimed that Ukrainian forces “had been comprehensively defeated” at all locations along the Kursk salient line, and Russian troops had destroyed dozens of Ukrainian combat vehicles and killed or wounded hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers. The official Kremlin source offered no evidence to support those claims.
Multiple Ukrainian milbloggers on Thursday reported a second series of battles in the Kursk sector, carried out by North Korean troops deployed to the south of Pogrebniki, near the village Kruglen’koe from Jan. 6-8.
Per video published by Ukraine’s 17th Tank Brigade and geo-located by the military information site DeepState, between one and three hundred North Korean infantrymen attempted a night infiltration via a tree line into Ukrainian fortifications around the village but were spotted by drones and taken under fire with mortars, grenade-dropping drones, heavy machine guns, and automatic grenade launchers.
The pro-Ukraine information platform Pulse of Ukraine said of the engagement: “North Korean troops tried to use a narrow forest corridor hoping to out-maneuver (infiltrate) Ukrainian defenses and launch an assault on Kruglen’koe.
Instead, they found themselves trapped in a deadly funnel as Ukrainian fighters unleashed automatic grenade launchers and drone strikes annihilating the closely-packed assault force, before they could even reach their objective.”
Kyiv Post researchers evaluating reports of the action found strong evidence that the engagement took place, but insufficient data to confirm all details reported by unofficial Ukrainian sources. A morning statement by Ukraine’s Army General Staff reported fighting in the area.
Ukraine on Jan. 4-5 launched a limited counteroffensive in the Kursk sector with the probable objectives of demonstrating to allies Kyiv’s forces could still take the initiative, and to inflict casualties on Russian forces. The Russian Defense Ministry on Thursday said Ukraine had deployed at least six combat brigades – on paper a force numbering close to 20,000 men – in the Kursk salient.
Agil Rustamzade, an independent Baku-based military analyst, on Jan. 6, said the main direction of the Ukrainian assault had been in the direction of the Kursk region village Berdichi (local name: Berdin) and that Ukrainian forces advanced 3-4 kilometers (1.9-2.5 miles) in that direction. The latest round of fighting may have been Russian counterattacks, but that is not confirmed, he said.
The leading Ukrainian military journalist, Yury Butusov, on Wednesday, published video of an interview with a purported Russian prisoner of war, Evgeniy “Adolf” Nurikov, a member of Russia’s 810th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade captured by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region. The Bakhortostan resident’s unconfirmed account told of poor supply to frontline troops and bad morale, and of his unit’s being hit with an unexpected Ukrainian assault on his position.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a Jan. 7 national television address said the Russian Federation has lost more than 38,000 soldiers in the Kursk region, 15,000 of them killed.
Anecdotal reports like the Nurikov video and dozens of drone videos published daily by official and unofficial Ukrainian sources generally support the Kyiv claim of heavy Russian losses in the Kursk region following frontal attacks against prepared Ukrainian defenses.
Russia’s state “news” agency TASS, on Thursday, announced that Ukrainian forces have suffered crushing casualties during the Kursk incursion losing – thus far: 49,010 soldiers, 273 tanks, 209 infantry fighting vehicles, 153 armored personnel carriers, 1,460 armored fighting vehicles, 1,400 vehicles, 340 artillery pieces, and 44 MLRS launchers. Corroborating Russian evidence of severe Ukrainian losses is less common than the opposite.
On Jan. 6 the outspokenly pro-Moscow X platform Severniy Veter/WarriorOfNorth published a 38-second video showing 47th Brigade M1A1 tanks advancing and, allegedly, being hit and set on fire by Russian artillery in an action purportedly taking place that day.
Ukrainian anti-propaganda workers exposed the video as a compilation of images dating back to November and, in some sections, geo-located not to the Kursk sector but to the Donbas sector some 400 kilometers to the southeast. Most of the blown-up tanks and armored personnel carriers shown to be blown up in the video actually were Russian, some pro-Ukraine observers claimed.
Russians have released a fake video that claims to show how they destroyed a Ukrainian mechanized column in the Kursk region.
— Sergio 🇺🇦 (@SergioCentaurus) January 6, 2025
This is archival footage, where most of the destroyed/damaged equipment is Russian, which was filmed in November. pic.twitter.com/HO30lqmySG
Check out more of Kyiv Post’s reporting on the 2025 Kursk Offensive:
- Did Ukraine Just Break Russia? The Shocking Kursk Offensive Explained
- VIDEO: Kursk Offensive 2025: Ukraine’s Game-Changing Move
- AFU Repels Major Russian Assault Near Kursk, Destroying 50 Vehicles and Killing 45
- Ukrainian Special Ops Crush Russian Offensive in Kursk Region
- Ukraine Strikes Russian Command Post in Kursk Region
- Ukrainian Special Ops Take Down Over a Dozen North Korean Soldiers in Kursk Offensive
- Blinken Says Ukraine Position in Kursk ‘Important’ For Negotiations
- Kursk Region Reports: Ukrainian Forces Inside Russia Repel Russian, North Korean Assaults
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