About 2,000 civilians, including children over three years old, remain in the Kursk region, controlled by the Ukrainian army, said in an interview with DW the press attaché of the Ukrainian military command on the territory of the Russian Federation, Colonel Alexei Dmitrashkovsky. According to him, this is the number that was established during patrols in the area. The colonel refused to provide more specific data so that the enemy side could not use this information.
In August 2024, Ukrainian units entered this Russian region in response to the full-scale invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
According to the Ukrainian side, 112 civilians were killed in the captured areas of the Kursk region, of which 36 people died as a result of Russian shells hitting their homes, and about 40 suffered heart attacks. More than 100 civilians were injured. Dmitrashkovsky also reported that the dead were buried in local cemeteries, and some in the courtyards of their houses. The information is important so that their relatives know where the bodies of their loved ones are, the spokesman explained. According to him, the Ukrainian side allows the local population to communicate with relatives and friends by phone, including via video link.
Humanitarian corridors in the Kursk region?
The Ukrainian military provides the residents of the Sudzha region with water and food, as well as medical assistance. That is why the local population trusts them, Dmytrashkovsky claims. In some cases, wounded residents are transported to the territory of Ukraine, where they are treated, and then returned. In this regard, the colonel told about the case of a young resident of Sudzha in advanced pregnancy. She was taken to the city of Sumy, where she gave birth.
Later, she was included in the exchange list: during the first and so far only humanitarian corridor in November 2024, she was allowed to leave for Russia. Ukraine is ready to hand over all its citizens to Russia, but the enemy "is trying in every way to slow down this process", says the representative of the Ukrainian army.
Russia gives contradictory data on the missing
The information on how many people are being sought after the invasion of Ukrainian units into the Kursk region on August 6, 2024 is very contradictory. For example, the Red Cross speaks of 5,000 missing and 1,200 dead, the deputy governor of the Kursk region Alexander Khinshtein named the figure of 1,174 people, and according to the Ombudsman of the Russian Federation Tatyana Moskalkova, 517 people are missing without a trace. This figure was also adopted by the Russian official authorities. Meanwhile, it is known that not everything in this information corresponds to reality, because the list also includes deceased local residents or relatives who filed a search request. This, in turn, has angered the relatives of the missing, journalist Ekaterina Lobanovskaya from the publication "7x7. Horizontal Russia" tells DW.
According to Russian activist Vladimir Sinelnikov, about 3,000 people remain in Sudzha and the surrounding area, contact with whom was cut off on August 6. On his TG channel, he published the full names of 340 people from the list. The public activist does not disclose his sources, but the publication "Pepel" has since established that the data of 90 people from this list coincide with those from Moskalkova's list of missing persons. Local residents in the Kursk region want a meeting with Khinshtein, as well as the opening of a green corridor for evacuation, but so far there has been no response from the authorities.
The front line in Kursk is almost unchanged
The Ukrainian military is trying to seize new territories in the Kursk region, but Russian troops are managing to regain them, says the head of the Conflict Intelligence Team group Ruslan Leviev. According to him, these actions have no strategic significance, but pursue purely political goals.
The observer suggests that the goal of the Ukrainian command was to turn the information narrative about the Russian army's offensive in eastern Ukraine: "They wanted to show that the Ukrainian army is still able to advance in 2025". At the same time, the pace of the Russian army's offensive in eastern Ukraine is slowing down, Leviev assures. But this creates a risk of encircling two of the most important cities in terms of logistical supplies for the Ukrainian army - Kostyantynivka and Pokrovsk.