Ukrainian troops have retired from everyone except a fragment of land in the Kursk Russia region, according to analysts and military soldiers, while their campaign of months to seize and occupy the Russian territory seem to end up in front of the Moscow counterattacks.
At the height of the offensive, the Ukrainian forces controlled about 500 square miles of Russian territory. On Sunday they were clinging to a narrow strip of land along the border between Russo-Ukraino, which covered just 30 square miles, according to Pasi Parinen, a military analyst of the Black Bird Group of Finland.
“The end of the battle is coming,” Parinen said in a telephone interview.
The amount of Russian territory still under Ukrainian control could not be confirmed independently and the soldiers reported fierce fights in the area. But in the midst of a rapid Russian advance supported by incessant air attacks and assaults of drones, Ukrainian troops last week retired from several villages in the Kursk and Southzha region, the main city under their control.
The Ukrainian military command stated that the troops reported to what described as a more defensible ground within Russia along the border, using hilly land to obtain better fire control on the approaching of Russian forces. Saturday, he released a map of the battlefield showing the fragment of land that Ukraine still controls in the Kursk region.
But it is not clear for how long the Ukrainian forces can retain that patch.
The continuous fight in Kursk is now less in keeping the Russian territory, the Ukrainian soldiers said, and more on the control of the best defensive positions to prevent the Russians from pushing the Ukraine Sumy region and opening a new front in the war.
“We continue to hold positions on the Kursk front,” said a commander of the assault platoon, who asked to be identified only by his call sign, Boroda, by phone. “The only difference is that our positions have moved significantly closer to the border.”
While the Ukrainian withdrawal from most of the Kursk region was quick, military experts said that it arrived after months of Russian attacks and bombing that constantly eroded the support point of Ukraine in the area and interrupted its procurement routes, finally forcing a retreat.
“What happened in recent months has been a modeling operation that has set the conditions for a succession of success,” said Franz-Stefan Gady, an Austrian military analyst who visited the Ucraine Sumy region on the border with Kursk last month to talk to the Ukrainian commanders.
Starting from December, the Russian forces, strengthened by newly deployed North Korean troops, have launched repeated attacks on the sides of the Ukrainian girder in the Kursk region. In mid -February, they had advanced within five miles from the main refueling routes of Ukraine in Southzha, allowing them to hit the roads with drones of drones.
At the end of last week, the Ministry of Defense of Russia said she had resumed Southzha; On Saturday he said that Russian forces had taken up two villages outside the city.
Unlike the previous retreats of the Kiev forces elsewhere, as in some parts of Eastern Ukraine, military analysts have said that what happened to Kursk was relatively ordered and did not entail the surrounding of a large number of troops – despite the affirmations contrary to the contrary made by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Trump president.
“There has been no threat of encirclement for Ukrainian troops and no test suggests differently,” said Serhii Kuzan, president of the Ukrainian security and cooperation center, a non -governmental research group.
Kyiv had hoped to use his control on Russian earth in Kursk as a leverage in any negotiation to end the war. Ukraine has agreed to support a ceased the fire of the month supported by the United States, provided that Russia does the same. The Kremlin has not yet agreed and seemed to extend the negotiations on the ceased the fire that Washington and Kyiv proposed last week by establishing conditions.
Steve Witkoff, special correspondent for Mr. Trump in the Middle East, who also acted as an interlocutor with Russia, on Sunday he told Cnn who expected the president to talk to Mr. Putin this week. Mr. Witkoff said he had a positive meeting with Mr. Putin last week that lasted from three to four hours. He refused to share the details of their conversation, but he said he was optimistic about the fact that an agreement was at hand.
This happened after the State Department said that the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of Russia spoke on Saturday of the “next steps”, without providing further details.
Nataliya Vasilyeva AND Tyler Pager Contributed relationships.