"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 forces, including North Korean troops, lost "up to a battalion of infantry" in fighting around one village in the southern Kursk region in roughly two days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.

The EU says most states will not be affected but other European countries, including Moldova, are facing shortages.

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.