Ukrainian troops are about to lose their hard-won foothold inside Russia’s Kursk region on Wednesday as Moscow claimed further advances there and military bloggers on both sides said Kyiv’s forces were withdrawing.
Ukraine sprang one of the biggest shocks of the war on August 6 last year by storming across the border and grabbing a chunk of land inside Russia, boosting citizens’ morale and gaining a potential bargaining chip, Reuters reports.
They have been gradually losing the region for the past seven months.
Russia’s defense ministry reported the capture of five more villages on Wednesday, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “the dynamics are good.”
Reuters confirmed the captures.
Russia claims they reclaimed 12 Kursk settlements. It was captured in the first place because it was mostly unguarded.
Forbes reports that Ukrainian brigades appear to be retreating from Kursk.
This war is going nowhere except to cause more deaths.
On Feb. 25, a flurry of accurate Russian drone strikes knocked out dozens of Ukrainian vehicles along the main road to Sudzha. This town is—or was—the main base for the 10,000-strong Ukrainian force occupying a significant, but quickly shrinking, salient in Kursk Oblast in western Russia, Forbes reported hours ago.
Forbes reports that was “the day you started worrying about Kursk,” wrote independent analyst Andrew Perpetua. Two weeks later, it seems the bulk of the Ukrainian force—including some of the Ukrainian army’s heaviest brigades—has evacuated Kursk and repositioned on the Ukrainian side of the border.
“My friends managed to leave Kursk, avoiding encirclement,” one Ukrainian source claimed Monday. “It’s sad that it came to this. But it is what it is.”
You can comment on the article after the ads and subscribe to the Daily Newsletter here if you would like a quick view of the articles of the day and any late news:
The map is exactly what I needed.
It may be soon that the only way to end this war is to destroy the entire leadership in Ukraine. Eliminating Zelensky should now be on the table. WW3 must be prevented, this is the key time. Ukraine should withdraw from Kursk or else face the consequences.
Ukraine really believed that such a tactic would draw Russian troops from the Donbass line into Kursk. Since it was an insignificant operation Russia didn’t pull in a massive force to drive UAF out, while Ukraine used a large contingent of their best brigades for the operation.
The question is; How will Zelensky be seen in the eyes of the average Ukrainian after this mess. There were approximately 5 to 7 thousand Ukrainian soldiers in that region when Russia began significant advances and how many are left now.