Ukraine incursion will not stop our advance: Putin

MOSCOW:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that his army was rapidly advancing in eastern Ukraine, citing this as proof that Kyiv's cross-border incursion into the Kursk region was failing.

His comments came just before he left Russia for a visit to Mongolia, a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Putin acknowledged the difficulties Ukraine's counteroffensive was putting on Russian border regions, but struck a defiant tone.

"People are experiencing and undergoing severe hardship, especially in the Kursk region," Putin said in a speech to schoolchildren at a televised event in Siberia.

"But the enemy did not achieve the main task that they set themselves: to stop our offensive in the Donbas... We have not had such a pace of offensive in the Donbas for a long time," he said.

"We have to, of course, deal with these bandits that entered the territory of the Russian Federation, specifically the Kursk region, attempting to destabilise the situation in the border areas," Putin said.

The Russian defence ministry said in a briefing Monday that it had captured the Donetsk village of Skuchne, without providing further details.

But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted the frontline had not moved.

"In the Pokrovsk direction, no matter how difficult it is, there has been no progress for two days. This is what the Commander-in-Chief told me," he said.

Russia continued its campaign of aerial bombardment of Ukrainian cities overnight, firing 35 missiles and 23 drones, Zelensky said earlier Monday.

Zelensky said a mosque there had been "severely damaged" and condemned Russia for its "destruction campaign against the Ukrainian people".

Three people were wounded in the capital, and the office of a Danish NGO was damaged.

Ukraine shot down nine ballistic missiles, 13 cruise missiles and 20 drones in the attack, the air force said.