A total of 3,800 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded by Ukrainian forces in Russia's Kursk Oblast, President Zelensky said in an interview with American podcaster Lex Fridman on Jan. 5.

When the deadly Grenfell Tower blaze in 2017 led to revelations that high-rise public housing buildings across Britain were wrapped in flammable cladding, the government vowed the building contractors responsible would pay for their negligence.

At the same time on Saturday, the Ukrainian armed forces reported 179 separate clashes along the tense line of contact, facing down attacks around the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the city of Pokrovsk in the country's Donbas region. They estimated as many as 1,730 Russian personnel were killed or captured in the assaults.

Ukraine launched a new offensive in Russia's Kursk region Sunday, Moscow and Kyiv said. Ukrainian forces had captured about 500 square miles of the western Russian province in a surprise incursion in August, but Russian and North Korean troops are believed to have retaken 40-50% of that area.

Russia has lost up to a battalion of North Korean soldiers over the past two days in its western Kursk border region in the ongoing war against Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said.