Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from all but a sliver of land in Russia’s Kursk region, according to military analysts and soldiers, as their monthslong campaign to seize and occupy Russian territory appears to be nearing an end in the face of Moscow’s counterattacks.
At the height of the offensive, Ukrainian forces controlled some 500 square miles of Russian territory. By Sunday, they were clinging to a narrow strip of land along the Russian-Ukrainian border, covering barely 30 square miles, according to Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group.
“The end of the battle is coming,” Mr. Paroinen said in a phone interview.
The amount of Russian territory still under Ukrainian control could not be independently confirmed, and soldiers reported fierce fighting in the area. But amid a swift Russian advance backed by relentless airstrikes and drone assaults, Ukrainian troops over the past week have withdrawn from several villages in the Kursk region as well as from Sudzha, the main town under their control.
The Ukrainian military command said that the troops had pulled back to what it described as more defensible ground inside Russia along the border, using hilly terrain to gain better fire control over approaching Russian forces. On Saturday, it released a map of the battlefield showing the sliver of land that Ukraine still controls in the Kursk region.
But it remains unclear how long Ukrainian forces can hold onto that patch.
The continuing fighting in Kursk is now less about holding Russian territory, Ukrainian soldiers said, and more about controlling the best defensive positions to prevent the Russians from pushing into the Sumy region of Ukraine and opening a new front in the war.
“We continue to hold positions on the Kursk front,” an assault platoon commander, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Boroda, said by phone. “The only difference is that our positions have shifted significantly closer to the border.”
While the Ukrainian retreat from most of the Kursk region has been quick, military experts said it came after months of Russian assaults and bombings that steadily eroded Ukraine’s foothold in the area and severed its supply routes, eventually forcing a withdrawal.
“What happened in the last few months was a shaping operation that set the conditions for a successful push,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, an Austrian military analyst who visited Ukraine’s Sumy region on the border with Kursk last month to speak with Ukrainian commanders.
Starting in December, Russian forces, reinforced by newly deployed North Korean troops, launched repeated attacks on the flanks of the Ukrainian-held bulge in the Kursk region. By mid-February, they had advanced within five miles of Ukraine’s main resupply routes into Sudzha, allowing them to target the roads with swarms of drones.
Late last week, Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it had retaken Sudzha; on Saturday it said Russian forces had retaken two villages outside the town.
Unlike previous retreats by Kyiv’s forces elsewhere, like in parts of eastern Ukraine, military analysts said what has happened in Kursk was relatively orderly and did not result in the encirclement of large number of troops — despite claims to the contrary made by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Trump.
“There was no threat of encirclement of Ukrainian troops, and no evidence suggests otherwise,” said Serhii Kuzan, the chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, a nongovernmental research group.
Kyiv had hoped to use its control over Russian land in Kursk as leverage in any negotiation to end the war. Ukraine has agreed to support a U.S.-backed monthlong cease-fire, as long as Russia does the same. The Kremlin has not yet agreed, and appeared to be prolonging negotiations over the cease-fire that Washington and Kyiv proposed last week by laying out conditions.
The State Department said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia spoke by phone on Saturday about “next steps,” without providing further details.
Russia’s foreign ministry in a separate statement on Sunday said that Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Rubio discussed “concrete aspects of the implementation of understandings” reached in U.S.-Russia talks held last month in Saudi Arabia. It also offered no further details.
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