Minister of Defense of Ukraine Rustem Umerov denied information on the alleged encirclement of Ukrainian servicemen in Kursk region of the Russian Federation on the American Fox News channel.

"Our defense forces, we continue to conduct defensive actions and we are keeping a significant number of kilometers of enemy territory under control. In order to preserve some of ability of forces and troops, we have conducted some planned redeployment to more favorable defense lines, but at this stage, no unit of the defense forces is encircled and statements about thousands of Ukrainian servicemen that are encircled are not correct," the minister said.

According to him, last fall, during the BRICS summit, information was spread about the alleged encirclement of some Ukrainian servicemen, "but the information was not confirmed." "So, this is a continuation of propaganda. But we will continue our active defensive operations with offensive actions against the flanks of the enemy task forces to prevent its invasion into our territory," Umerov said.