Russia said it expelled Ukrainian troops from a key town in the Kursk region ahead of talks with the US, bringing President Vladimir Putin closer to his goal of completely dislodging Kyiv’s forces from his country.
Russian forces retook Sudzha, a border town that has a crucial gas transportation hub nearby, the Defense Ministry said in a statement Thursday on Telegram. Russian state media on Wednesday broadcast footage of troops raising flags in two locations in the town centre.
Moscow’s military has pushed the Ukrainian army back from more than 86% of the area they held after a surprise incursion in August, Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff said late Wednesday during an unexpected visit by Putin to the region. He added that some units had crossed the state border and entered Ukraine’s Sumy region. His claim couldn’t be independently verified.
Russia is regaining ground as US officials are due to land in Moscow on Thursday to persuade Putin to sign a 30-day ceasefire that delegations from Washington and Kyiv agreed upon in Jeddah earlier this week.
The complete expulsion of Ukrainian forces would deal a blow to Kyiv, which had hoped to use Russian territory it captured in the first occupation of Russian lands by a foreign military since WWII as a potential bargaining chip in the peace talks sought by US President Donald Trump.
In a show of determination, Putin visited his troops in Kursk region, which borders Ukraine, on Wednesday. Wearing military fatigues, he met with high-ranking officers and called for “completely defeating the enemy that entrenched in the Kursk region as soon as possible,” according to state-run Rossiya 24 TV.
Ukraine’s border service confirmed on Wednesday that Russians are attacking the Sumy region, which shares a border with Kursk.
“Ukraine will continue to keep up the defence of the Kursk region for as long as is necessary and expedient,” Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said late Wednesday. However, in order to save soldiers’ lives, “defence force units, if necessary, are manoeuvring to more advantageous positions.”
The area under Ukrainian control in Kursk has shrunk significantly since early February, based on data from the DeepState open-source map service. Until recently, Moscow’s military had struggled to dislodge Kyiv’s forces for more than seven months, despite deploying additional soldiers from North Korea.
The Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk Region was a shock for Russians, bringing home the consequences of the war Putin started in February 2022. Days after Ukraine’s troops crossed the border, Putin told defence officials their “main objective” was to repel the invasion.
Unlike Putin, who has declared the annexation of large swathes of Kyiv’s territory, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said his country has no need to control any lands outside its internationally recognised borders. Zelensky has also said Kyiv’s operations in Kursk helped to prevent a potential Russian incursion into Ukraine’s neighbouring Sumy region.
US negotiators
Trump on Wednesday said “people are going to Russia right now as we speak, and hopefully we can get a ceasefire from Russia.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News that US envoy Steve Witkoff was “making his way to Moscow this week” to discuss the truce. It will be Witkoff’s second trip to Moscow in about a month.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed US negotiators were travelling to Russia and said that Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov and his American counterpart, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, had spoken by phone on Wednesday, the Interfax news service reported.
Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s longtime ally who provided his country’s territory as a launchpad for Russia’s invasion into Ukraine, arrived in Moscow on Thursday ahead of Witkoff’s visit. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the two visits were coordinated.
Putin will probably agree to eventual truce terms with Ukraine but wants his own conditions met beforehand, likely dragging out the negotiations, according to a person familiar with the Kremlin’s thinking. To achieve that, he’ll try to stretch out the timeline for agreeing to any halt to fighting in Ukraine, other people with knowledge of the situation said.