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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on September 19 that Ukraine's incursion into Russia's southwestern Kursk region had led to the deployment of 40,000 Russian military personnel to the area.

His comments in his evening video address came after Moscow and Kyiv gave conflicting accounts of the situation in the Kursk region following Ukraine's surprise invasion in August.

Earlier, on September 19, the Russian military said it had gained ground in attempts to repel the incursion, while the Ukrainian military said the Russian counteroffensive had been stopped.

Russian Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of a Chechen special forces unit and an official in the Defense Ministry, said on September 19 that Russian forces had recaptured two villages in the Kursk region.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian military spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskiy told AFP that a Russian flanking maneuver in the Kursk region had been “stopped.”

“The situation has stabilized and today everything is under control. They are not succeeding,” Dmytrashkivskiy said on September 19.

In recent weeks, Russia has claimed to have recaptured several villages overrun by Ukrainian troops during the invasion. At the height of the invasion, Ukraine is believed to have controlled around 1,300 square kilometers in the Kursk region, which borders northeastern Ukraine.

Zelensky has stated that Kyiv has no intention of holding Russian territory, but that the incursion would give Ukraine more leverage in possible peace talks and that captured Russian soldiers would be valuable for a prisoner exchange.

Since the invasion on August 6, there have been three such clashes involving Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.

In his nightly video, Zelensky also said that Ukrainian forces had reduced the ability of Russian troops to launch attacks in the Donetsk region on the eastern front.

Russian forces targeted the Sumy region on September 19, hitting a nursing home, Zelensky said. The attack killed a person and 12 others injured, the state emergency service said on Telegram. The post included images showing elderly people in wheelchairs waiting outside and others lying on the ground under blankets.

The impact partially destroyed the fifth floor of the building and blew out windows on the ground floor. More than 140 people had to be evacuated, the emergency services said.

In the wake of Russia's counteroffensive on its own territory, which, according to Alaudinov, led to the recapture of the towns of Nikolayevo-Darino and Darino on September 19, Russian troops are now reportedly only 15 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

In addition, the Russian armed forces are now within striking distance of the Russian city of Sverdlikovo, which is located near the border and serves as a logistics center for the Ukrainian armed forces.

Despite the advance of Ukrainian troops into Russia, the Russian military said it had made significant progress in its attempts to capture the strategically important city of Pokrovsk in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk.

“Our entire front has advanced,” Alaudinov said on September 19, referring to both the counteroffensive in Russia and the progress in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the governor of Russia's Belgorod region said on September 19 that Ukraine continued to bombard the region with artillery fire and drone attacks.

Vyacheslav Gladkov said that after 22 drone strikes and more than 160 artillery strikes, only minor damage had been reported.

In Ukraine, national energy grid operator Ukrenerho said there were temporary power outages in the northeastern region of Sumy due to Russian strikes.

Ukraine's energy infrastructure has been massively targeted by Russia, which could lead to an energy deficit this winter, according to the latest report by the International Energy Agency (IEA).

“Further attacks on infrastructure, unforeseen equipment failures and missed maintenance cycles increase the risks,” the IEA said on September 19.

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said in a report the same day that Ukrainian cities had been without electricity for hours over the course of weeks due to increased Russian efforts to attack energy infrastructure starting in fall 2022.

“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the military campaign to damage or destroy Ukraine's civilian electricity and heat generation and transmission infrastructure violated fundamental principles of international humanitarian law in many respects,” the report said.

On September 19, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced that 160 million euros (178 million dollars) from the proceeds of frozen Russian assets would be transferred to Ukraine to help it address urgent humanitarian needs this winter.

With reporting from AFP, TASS and Reuters