Zelensky denies Ukrainian troops encircled in Russia's Kursk region

BELGRADE: Tens of thousands rallied on Saturday in downtown Belgrade against populist President Aleksandar Vucic and his government, the latest in a series of anti-corruption protests that have shaken his 13-year firm grip on power.
A deafening sound of whistles and vuvuzelas echoed throughout the Serbian capital, on high alert since the rally was announced, as people headed toward several agreed-on protest venues. Some carried banners that read, “He’s Finished!” Others chanted: “Pump it Up,” a slogan adopted during the four months of student-led protests.
It was probably the biggest anti-government rally ever held in the Balkan country.
”I expect that this will shake his authority and that Vucic will realize that people are no longer for him,” Milenko Kovacevic, a protester, said.
Reflecting mounting tensions, police said they arrested a man who rammed his car into protesters in a Belgrade suburb, injuring three people.
Ahead of the demonstration, Vucic repeatedly warned of alleged plans for unrest while threatening arrests and harsh sentences for any incidents.
In an apparent effort to prevent people from attending the rally, Belgrade city transport was canceled Saturday while huge columns of cars jammed the roads leading into the capital. The transport company said the cancelation was made “for security reasons.”
On Friday evening, tens of thousands of people staged a joyous welcome for the students who have been marching or cycling for days from across Serbia toward Belgrade for the main rally on Saturday afternoon. From early morning, people started assembling in various parts of the city, preparing to march toward the center.
Fueling fears of clashes, Vucic’s supporters have been camping in central Belgrade in front of his headquarters. The crowd included ex-members of a dreaded paramilitary unit involved in the assassination in 2003 of Serbia’s first democratic Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, as well as soccer hooligans who are known for causing violence.
Private N1 television on Saturday broadcast footage of dozens of young men with baseball caps going into the pro-Vucic camp.
Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told state RTS broadcaster that 13 people have been detained overnight but that no major incidents were reported on Friday. He said police detained six opposition activists for allegedly plotting to stage a coup and stir unrest on Saturday.
Protesting students have led the nationwide anti-graft movement, which started after a concrete canopy collapsed at a train station and killed 15 people in Serbia’s north on Nov. 1.
Many in Serbia blamed the crash on rampant government corruption, negligence and disrespect of construction safety regulations.
Vucic has been claiming that Western intelligence services were behind almost daily student-led protests with an aim to oust him from power.
Students have struck a chord among the citizens who are disillusioned with politicians and have lost faith in the state institutions. Previous student-led rallies in other Serbian cities have been peaceful while drawing huge crowds.

KYIV: Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky denied Saturday his troops were encircled in Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow has regained swathes of land this week, as Russia said it took back two more villages in the border region.
US leader Donald Trump had a day earlier asked Russia’s Vladimir Putin on social media to spare the lives of Ukrainian troops that he said were “completely surrounded” by the Russian army.
Moscow has pushed this week to retake a large part of the land that Ukraine originally captured in its western Kursk region last summer.
Zelensky has acknowledged that the situation in the Kursk area is “very difficult” for Ukraine, but contradicted Trump’s comments.
“There is no encirclement of out troops,” he said on social media, adding that: “Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region.”
Kyiv had hoped to use the Russian territories as a bargaining chip in any negotiations to end the more than three-year conflict.
The UK on Saturday hosted a virtual summit on how to protect any ceasefire in Ukraine, but Zelensky warned that Moscow was intent on “prolonging the war” and “ignoring diplomacy.”
He also accused Moscow of amassing troops on the border with “an intention to attack our Sumy region” — attacked by Moscow at the start of its 2022 invasion but since spared the worst of the fighting seen in other eastern regions.
Putin had this week not committed to an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine proposed by the US, instead putting forward conditions and raising “serious questions” about the idea.
The Kremlin has hailed its troops ousting Ukrainian forces from swathes of the Kursk region, with Moscow on Saturday releasing images of a destroyed center in Sudzha — the main town occupied by Ukrainian forces for months.
The Russian defense ministry said troops took control over the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina — north and west of Sudzha.
Sudzha was home to around 6,000 people before fighting began and Ukraine had set up a military administration there after its shock August 2024 incursion.
The Russian defense ministry’s footage showed heavily destroyed houses and shops, with rubble and broken glass on the streets, and some Russian flags flying.
The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinstein, said Russia had evacuated 275 civilians from areas it had regained since Wednesday.
Khinstein said “174 of the residents are now in temporary accommodation” and that the “work of evacuating our residents is continuing.”
The Kremlin has hailed the Kursk operations as a major success.
Responding to Trump’s call to spare Ukrainian troops in Kursk region, Putin said Friday:
“If they lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and dignified treatment.”
Russia’s defense ministry also said that military engineers were working to clear the areas that were held by Ukraine.
Russia had also deployed almost 200 firefighters to help put out a fire at an oil depot caused by a Ukraine drone strike in the southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.
The governor of the Krasnodar region Veniamin Kondratyev said in the early hours of Saturday that a petrol reserve station in the Black Sea city of Tuapse was “attacked by the Kyiv regime.”
Elsewhere on the front, Zelensky claimed the situation around the eastern city of Pokrovsk — which Russian troops have tried to capture for months — had “stabilized.”
Ukrainian officials also said the number of wounded from a Russian strike a day earlier on Zelensky’s hometown Kryvy Rig rose to 14.
Moscow has targeted the central city throughout its invasion and Kyiv said Friday it struck a residential area of Kryvy Rig, destroying large apartment buildings.
Ukrainian prosecutors said the wounded children were a two-year-old and a 15-year-old.