Ukraine’s armed forces on Monday claimed to have made rapid and significant territorial gains during their surprise offensive into Russia’s southern Kursk region. A week into the attack, some 1,000 square kilometres of territory are now under Ukrainian control, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in a video conference with military chiefs in Kiev. The start of the meeting and Syrskyi’s remarks were relayed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X, formerly Twitter. Earlier, the acting Russian governor of the Kursk region, Alexei Smirnov, conceded that there had been territorial los…