"During the Kursk operation, the enemy has already lost 38,000 of their soldiers in this direction alone, with nearly 15,000 of these losses being irreversible," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.

"Russian and North Korean military leaders are treating these troops as expendable," a senior White House official said.

The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline was built in the Soviet era to carry Siberian gas to European markets. It became the main conduit to Ukraine’s border with Slovakia from Siberia, passing through the town of Sudzha — which is now under the control of Ukrainian military forces — in Russia’s Kursk region.

Ukraine on Wednesday halted Russian gas supplies to European customers through its pipeline network after a prewar transit deal expired at the end of 2024 and almost three years into Moscow's all-out invasion of its neighbor.