Russian forces have almost completely surrounded Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region of Russia, with some Ukrainian units forced to leave their vehicles behind while they retire, according to an American military official.
There are growing indications that Russia could take Kursk again “very soon,” said the official.
The hesitant response of Russian President Vladimir Putin to a high fire proposed by the United States in Ukraine has coincided with an impulse of his country’s forces to reverse Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region of Russia, according to two Western officials.
The Ukrainian troops confiscated the area within Russia, just on the eastern border of Ukraine, last year in a bold movement that ashamed to Moscow. But losing control of the Kursk region would be a blow to kyiv, since the Ukrainian government has seen the territory as a valuable leverage in any future peace conversation.
In the last 11 days, Russian forces intensified land and aerial attacks against Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region from multiple directions, two Western officials and a military analyst said.
The intensified offensive was launched after the Trump administration temporarily suspended military and intelligence assistance to kyiv on March 3, that an official and European analysts say that it was probably not a coincidence.
American assistance was restored on Wednesday, after the Trump administration said it was satisfied that the Ukraine government was ready to negotiate a high fire with Russia.
After marking the Ukrainian troops for days around Sudzha, the Russian forces have recovered the city in the Kursk region, Russian officials said Thursday.
If current trends continue, Russian forces could soon recover the entire area that Ukrainian troops had occupied since August, according to Angelica Evans, an analyst at Russia at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington headquarters in Washington headquarters that publishes daily conflict evaluations.
Russia had constantly built a great force around Kursk since the Ukrainians confiscated the area in August, with an estimated 78,000 Russian and North Korean troops on the ground, according to Evans.
“They have had the ability to resume the outgoing for a couple of months, probably. But we have not really seen an effort to prioritize it until the last week or so, ”he said.
For two days, Russia dropped several three-tons FAB-3000 bombs against Ukrainian objectives in Kursk that rarely uses in the front line, according to Evans. The Russians use guidance kits to convert free free drop pumps into guided sliding pumps that can be launched from outside the rank of most Ukraine air defense systems.
Ukraine denied that his troops were surrounded in Kursk or in danger of surrounding.
“The reports of the alleged” rodeo “of the Ukrainian units by the enemy in the Kursk region are false and manufactured by the Russians for political manipulation and to exert pressure on Ukraine and its partners,” said Ukraine General personnel in a statement on Friday.
The incursion of Ukraine in Russia in August marked the first time that a foreign army had occupied Russian lands since World War II.
As the Ukrainian troops were pressured in Kursk, the envoy of President Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, met on Thursday in Moscow in Moscow to try to advance in a high -fire agreement proposed in Ukraine. A Kremlin spokesman said later that there were “reasons to be cautiously optimistic” about the prospects of finishing the war.
Before meeting Witkoff, Putin said that, although in theory he accepted the high fire on the table, he said that many “nuances” had to be resolved, including the fate of Ukrainian troops in Kursk.
Putin seemed to be trying to complicate the negotiations of buying time for Russian forces as they advance in Kursk, said the European official.
Referring to the Ukrainians in Kursk, Putin asked what will happen to the troops if the fire is remembered. “Will everyone who are there without fighting come out? Or will the Ukrainian leadership order them to place weapons and surrender?
In a publication on social networks on Friday, Trump indicated that Ukrainian troops faced terrible circumstances, although he did not specify where.
“Thousands of Ukrainian troops are completely surrounded by the Russian army,” Trump wrote in all capital letters. He added that he had asked Putin to forgive the lives of Ukrainian troops.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his country continues to support a 30 -day fire as a step towards lasting peace. He accused Russia of “deliberately established conditions that only complicate and drag the process.”
