KYIV: Russia has pushed Ukrainian forces from one of their last remaining footholds in Russia’s Kursk region, officials said Saturday.
According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, its forces took control of the village of Oleshnya, on the border with Ukraine.
“Units of the ‘North’ military group have liberated the village of Oleshnya in the Kursk region during active offensive operations,” the ministry said in a statement. The Associated Press was unable to immediately verify the claim and there was no immediate response from Ukrainian officials.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, Russia is still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal, some seven miles (11 kilometers) south of Oleshnya.
“The Russian military has yet to push the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of Gornal ... in order to completely liberate the Kursk region. Fierce fighting is underway in the settlement,” the agency reported, citing Russia security agencies.
Russian and North Korean soldiers have nearly deprived Kyiv of a key bargaining chip by retaking most of the region, where Ukrainian troops staged a surprise incursion last year.
In other developments, the Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia fired 87 exploding drones and decoys in the latest wave of attacks overnight into Saturday. It said 33 of them were intercepted and another 36 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.
Russian attacks damaged farms in the Odesa region and sparked fires in the Sumy region overnight, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Saturday. Fires were contained, and no casualties were reported.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense, meanwhile, said its air defense systems shot down two Ukrainian drones overnight into Saturday.
Russia says it has retaken another village in the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces
https://arab.news/549rq
Russia says it has retaken another village in the Kursk region from Ukrainian forces
- “Units of the ‘North’ military group have liberated the village of Oleshnya in the Kursk region during active offensive operations,” the ministry said
- Russia is still fighting to push Ukrainian forces out of the village of Gornal
French publisher recalls dictionary over ‘Jewish settler’ reference
- The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks”
- The four books are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said
PARSI: French publisher Hachette on Friday said it had recalled a dictionary that described the Israeli victims of the October 7, 2023 attacks as “Jewish settlers” and promised to review all its textbooks and educational materials.
The Larousse dictionary for 11- to 15-year-old students contained the same phrase as that discovered by an anti-racism body in three revision books, the company told AFP.
The entry in French reads: “In October 2023, following the death of more than 1,200 Jewish settlers in a series of Hamas attacks, Israel decided to tighten its economic blockade and invade a large part of the Gaza Strip, triggering a major humanitarian crisis in the region.”
The worst attack in Israeli history saw militants from the Palestinian Islamist group kill around 1,200 people in settlements close to the Gaza Strip and at a music festival.
“Jewish settlers” is a term used to describe Israelis living on illegally occupied Palestinian land.
The four books, which were immediately withdrawn from sale, are subject to a recall procedure and will be destroyed, Hachette said, promising a “thorough review of its textbooks, educational materials and dictionaries.”
France’s leading publishing group, which came under the control of the ultra-conservative Vincent Bollore at the end of 2023, has begun an internal inquiry “to determine how such an error was made.”
It promised to put in place “a new, strengthened verification process for all its future publications” in these series.
President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday said that it was “intolerable” that the revision books for the French school leavers’ exam, the baccalaureat, “falsify the facts” about the “terrorist and antisemitic attacks by Hamas.”
“Revisionism has no place in the Republic,” he wrote on X.
Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,221 people, with 251 people taken hostage, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Authorities in Gaza estimate that more than 70,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces during their bombardment of the territory since, while nearly 80 percent of buildings have been destroyed or damaged, according to UN data.
Israeli forces have killed at least 447 Palestinians in Gaza since a ceasefire took effect in October, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
