Currently, there are 60,000 Russian troops in the Kursk region, who managed to pull back from Kharkiv and Sumy and protect these cities from attack. This was stated by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an interview with the Italian TV channel RaiNews24, UNN reports.
"These were preventive steps, because we knew and not only we knew. Our European colleagues and American intelligence... we shared information, everyone understood that this was Putin's next goal - to occupy our north, the city of Sumy. The city of Kharkiv. Today, Kharkiv has more than 1 million people, so these are all big cities where a lot of people live, and if he occupies, hundreds of thousands of people will die, so we had to take the first steps, and we saw a large number of their troops amassing to occupy Sumy, and we took the first step before they did. This helped us a lot," Zelensky said.
He noted that 60,000 Russian troops are currently deployed in the Kursk sector.
"It also helped us in the Kharkiv region, they moved a lot of troops from Kharkiv to Kursk, and we were able to stop them in the Kharkiv region. This was a tactical success for Ukraine, but not a success for the occupation, we don't need their territory, we don't need their lands, we just want to live peacefully at home without war. This is the only thing we need, and this is why these appropriate steps were taken," the President added.
Recall
President Zelenskyy has previously stated that the operation in the Kursk region has become a powerful bargaining chip in negotiations with the countries of the Global South. According to Bloomberg, the Ukrainian Armed Forces may leave the Kursk region by spring 2025.