By Mark Trevelyan
(Reuters) – Ukrainian troops appeared on the point of losing 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.
But after clinging for more than seven months to a gradually shrinking area, Ukraine has seen its position worsen sharply in the past week.
Russia’s defence ministry on Wednesday reported the capture of five more villages, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that “the dynamics are good”.
Reuters was able to verify video published by Russian bloggers and state media showing troops standing with a Russian tricolour flag on a square in the centre of Sudzha, a town near the Ukrainian border on a highway used by Ukraine as a supply route.
Ukraine’s top commander denied this week that his forces were being encircled, but said they were taking up better defensive positions.
Skadovskyi Defender, a Ukrainian military blogger, posted on Telegram: “Ukraine’s Armed Forces are leaving Kursk. There will be no Ukrainian soldier there by Friday.”
The same channel said, however, that Ukraine was continuing to conduct heavy strikes on Sudzha.
The Russian governor of the region said four civilian employees of a feed mill had been killed northeast of Sudzha on Wednesday.
Reuters could not verify the accounts from either side because of reporting restrictions.
Independent Russian analyst Ruslan Leviev said the Ukrainian incursion was drawing to a close.
“Maybe this story will end today. Maybe they (the Ukrainians) will try to hold the border villages for another couple of days. But overall, the story of the Kursk bridgehead is coming to an end, and Ukrainian troops are leaving,” he told Dozhd TV.
Ukraine agreed on Tuesday to a U.S. proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in the war, which has dragged on for more than three years. The Kremlin said it needed to be briefed by the U.S. side before it would comment on whether the ceasefire terms were acceptable.
(Additional reporting by Dmitry Antonov in Moscow, Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv and Lucy Papachristou in London, writing by Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
