"At 9 am Moscow time (on Sunday), to stop the Russian forces' advance in Kursk, the enemy launched a counterattack", writes Russia's Defense Ministry according to the AFP news agency.
"Kursk area, good news", writes simultaneously Andrij Jermak, chief of staff to Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyj. "Russia gets what it deserves".
Earlier, late on Saturday, Zelenskyj himself had written about the heavy bloodshed in the area. "In the battles today and yesterday near a village, Machnovka in the Kursk region, the Russian army lost up to an entire army battalion, which included North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers", he stated on social media.
The information is said to have come from a situation report from Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyj.
A battalion normally consists of several hundred up to 1,500 men.
According to previous estimates, North Korea has sent over 10,000 soldiers to support Russia's offensive war.
But despite the losses, South Korea has made the assessment that North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-Un plans to send additional forces, and also deliver so-called suicide drones to the war.
