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    Ukraine Retreats From Most of Russia’s Kursk Region

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    The daring campaign Ukraine launched last summer to seize and occupy Russian territory appears to be nearing an end.Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from all but a sliver of land in Russia’s Kursk region, according to military analysts and soldiers, as their monthslong campaign to seize and occupy Russian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a swift Russian advance backed by relentless airstrikes and drone assaults, Ukrainian troops over the past week have withdrawn from several villages in the Kursk region as well as from Sudzha, the main town under their control.The Ukrainian military command said that the troops had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.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Presses Offensive in Kursk Amid Cease-Fire Talks With U.S.

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      Moscow said it had retaken two villages outside the town of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on the claim.Moscow is pressing its offensive to retake the full territory of Russia’s Kursk region from Ukraine as negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin continue over a possible cease-fire in the three-year war.Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had retaken two villages outside Sudzha, the main Russian town that Ukraine occupied since its surprise offensive into Russia last summer but appears to have lost in recent days. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on Russia’s newest claim and have not confirmed a retreat by its forces from Sudzha.Moscow’s advances on the Kursk front came a day after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called on Ukrainian forces still fighting in the region to lay down their arms. Mr. Putin said he would spare their lives if they surrendered.The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated Mr. Putin’s demand in comments to the state news agency Tass on Saturday.“It’s still valid,” Mr. Peskov said, although he added that “time was running out.”The Russian leader has said that Ukrainian forces are encircled in the region, an assertion that President Trump repeated in a message on Truth Social.But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine denied that the Ukrainian troops were surrounded.“Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region,” Mr. Zelensky said in a post Saturday on Facebook, referring to North Korean fighters who have been assisting Russia in Kursk. “There is no encirclement of our troops.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Says It Has Retaken Key Kursk Town From Ukraine

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      Russia’s Defense Ministry said Thursday that the military had regained full control of the town of Sudzha, the main population center in the part of the Kursk region of Russia that Ukrainian troops had captured last summer.Ukrainian officials have not confirmed a retreat from the town, where the previous night Kyiv’s military had reported fierce fighting. If confirmed, that would leave only small pockets of Russian land along the border under Ukrainian control — and could deny Kyiv a key point of leverage in any cease-fire negotiations as U.S. officials head to Moscow for talks.Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Wednesday night that Ukrainian troops would “hold the line in the Kursk region for as long as it remains reasonable and necessary.” More

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      Putin Visits Kursk to Cheer Russian Troops Trying to Oust Ukraine

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      The trip comes as President Trump looks to secure the Russian leader’s support for a 30-day cease-fire.Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.The Russian leader’s pointed visit came a day after a U.S. delegation met in Saudi Arabia with Ukrainian officials, who agreed to a 30-day cease-fire in the war. American officials planned to take the proposal to Mr. Putin, who has previously said he is not interested in a temporary truce.Dressed in a green camouflage uniform, Mr. Putin sat at a desk with maps spread out in front of him, according to photos released by the Kremlin. He appeared with Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.In video footage released by Russian state media, Mr. Putin praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the Kursk region. He called on the troops to seize the territory for good from Ukrainian forces, who have been occupying portions of the Russian border region since last summer. Kyiv had hoped to use the territory as a bargaining chip in peace talks.The Russian leader also demanded that Ukrainian forces taken prisoner in the region be treated and prosecuted as terrorists under Russian law. General Gerasimov said more than 400 Ukrainian troops had been captured in the operations.“People who are on the territory of the Kursk region, committing crimes here against the civilian population and opposing our armed forces, law enforcement agencies and special services, in accordance with the laws of the Russian Federation, are terrorists,” Mr. Putin said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Russia Captures More Villages in Eastern Ukraine

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      Russian forces are closing in on two strongholds. The fall of the cities could pave the way for a takeover of the southern part of the Donetsk region, analysts said.Russian troops in eastern Ukraine have seized at least 10 villages and settlements in roughly as many days, according to a group with ties to the Ukrainian Army that maps the battlefield, as Moscow presses on with slow but steady advances that have heightened pressure on Ukraine’s authorities to start cease-fire talks.The situation looks particularly precarious for Ukrainian forces in Donetsk, in Ukraine’s east, where Russian forces are closing in on their last two strongholds in the southern part of the region, according to the analysis by the group, DeepState. The fall of the strongholds, Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka, could pave the way for a Russian takeover of the area, experts say.Russia, which annexed Donetsk in 2022 and controls about two-thirds of the region, is seeking to consolidate power over the whole territory. It has concentrated its attacks in the south of the region, searching for weak points in the Ukrainian lines and attacking from many directions, giving outnumbered Ukrainian troops little choice but to withdraw.“This is indeed the most difficult situation in almost three years of war,” Andrii Biletskyi, the commander of the Third Assault Brigade, one of Ukraine’s top fighting units, told the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda last week, referring to the overall state of the battlefield.Since this summer, Russian troops have advanced in the Donetsk region at a pace unseen since 2022, capturing hundreds of miles of territory. Experts say the situation, although difficult, is not catastrophic for Ukraine because Russia has yet to reach any major city in the area.Nevertheless, concerned about their losses, the Ukrainian authorities are warming up to the possibility of opening peace talks with Moscow, which is demanding that it be able to hold onto its gains in Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.K. Man Fighting for Ukraine Is Said to Be Captured in Russia

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      Russian state media reported that a British volunteer for the Ukrainian Army was captured amid fighting in the Kursk region.Russian forces in the country’s Kursk region have captured a British man who volunteered for the Ukrainian Army, Russia’s state news agencies reported, in what would likely be the first case of a Westerner detained on Russian soil while fighting for Ukraine.A Russian state news agency identified the detained individual on Monday as James Scott Rhys Anderson. The agency, Tass, reported that he was part of a battalion of up to 500 Ukrainian servicemen sent to the sliver of land in the Kursk region that has been occupied by Ukraine since August. Mr. Anderson said he was deployed there against his will, according to Tass.When asked about Mr. Anderson being captured in Russia, the British Foreign Office said only that it was “supporting the family of a British man following reports of his detention.”Before being dispatched to the Kursk region, Mr. Anderson, a former signalman in the British Army, was training Ukrainian soldiers at a military range near the village of Inhulets in central Ukraine, according to Tass.Tass also referred to an unverified video, posted by a pro-Russian military blog on Telegram, a popular messaging app, in which Mr. Anderson, said in the video to be 22, said that he had served in the British Army for four years, starting in 2019, but then “got fired” from his job. He then decided to join the international legion in Ukraine.“That was a stupid idea,” Mr. Anderson said in the video.Yuri Podolyaka, one the most popular pro-Kremlin military bloggers on Telegram, said in a post that Mr. Anderson was captured in the village of Plyokhovo, about a mile north of the border between Russia and Ukraine. Plyokhovo has been the scene of some of the most intense fighting in the area.Over the past few weeks, Russia has been trying to drive Ukrainian forces out of the Kursk region. So far, at least a third of the captured territory has been retaken by Russia in bloody assaults against some of the best Ukrainian units.After more than two and a half years of heavy fighting, both Russia and Ukraine are suffering from troop shortages. But with a much smaller population, the difficulty has been more acute for Kyiv.Russian investigators are now likely to charge Mr. Anderson with being a mercenary in a foreign conflict. If convicted, he could face up to 15 years in prison.In June 2022, a court in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine sentenced to death two British men who had been fighting for Ukraine. They were released in a prisoner exchange that September.Megan Specia More

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      What Are ATACMS, the U.S. Missiles That May Be Used Against Russia?

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      In a major policy shift, the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use the ballistic missiles within Russia.For the first time, the Biden administration has authorized Ukraine to use U.S.-supplied ballistic missiles for attacks inside Russia, American officials say, marking a major policy shift.The missiles are known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS (pronounced “attack ’ems”). They are likely to be initially employed against Russian and North Korean troops to support Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region of western Russia, according to American officials.Ukraine has been lobbying the United States for years to receive the authorization, which comes in the final months of the Biden administration. President-elect Donald J. Trump has said he will seek a quick end to the war in Ukraine.Here’s what you need to know about ATACMSWhat do these missiles do?Why did the U.S. wait?How will Ukraine use them?Has the U.S. used them in combat?What do these missiles do?ATACMS, made by Lockheed Martin, are short-range ballistic missiles that, depending on the model, can strike targets 190 miles away with a warhead containing about 375 pounds of explosives. Ballistic missiles fly much higher into the atmosphere than artillery rockets and many times farther, coming back to the ground at incredibly high speed because of gravity’s pull.They can be fired from the HIMARS mobile launchers that the United States has provided Ukraine, as well as from older M270 launchers sent from Britain and Germany.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      50,000 Russian and North Korean Troops Mass Ahead of Attack, U.S. Says

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      Ukrainian officials expect a counteroffensive in western Russia to begin in the coming days as North Korea’s troops train with Russian forces.The Russian military has assembled a force of 50,000 soldiers, including North Korean troops, as it prepares to begin an assault aimed at reclaiming territory seized by Ukraine in the Kursk region of Russia, according to U.S. and Ukrainian officials.A new U.S. assessment concludes that Russia has massed the force without having to pull soldiers out of Ukraine’s east — its main battlefield priority — allowing Moscow to press on multiple fronts simultaneously.Russian troops have been clawing back some of the territory that Ukraine captured in Kursk this year. They have been attacking Ukrainian positions with missile strikes and artillery fire, but they have not yet begun a major assault there, U.S. officials said.Ukrainian officials say they expect such an attack involving the North Korean troops in the coming days.For now, the North Koreans are training with Russian forces in the far western part of Kursk.The Russian-North Korean offensive looms as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to re-enter office with a stated goal of ending the war quickly. Mr. Trump has said little about how he would settle the conflict, but Vice President-elect JD Vance has outlined a plan that would allow Russia to keep the territory it has seized in Ukraine.Some U.S. military and intelligence officials have grown more pessimistic about Ukraine’s overall prospects, noting that Russia has steadily gained ground, both in Kursk and in eastern Ukraine. Officials say the setbacks are partly a result of Ukraine’s failure to solve critical shortfalls in troop strength.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      North Korea, in the Spotlight Over Ukraine, Launches a Long-Range Missile

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      The launch, into waters west of Japan, came shortly after the United States and South Korea criticized the North for sending troops to join Russia’s war. North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile off its east coast on Thursday, South Korean defense officials said, shortly after the United States and South Korea condemned the country for deploying troops near Ukraine to join Russia’s war effort.The missile was fired from Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, at a deliberately steep angle so that it reached an unusually high altitude but did not fly over Japan, the South Korean military said in a brief statement. The missile landed in waters between North Korea and Japan.The military said it was analyzing data to learn more about the missile, but that it believed it was an ICBM. North Korea last tested a long-range missile​ in December, when it test-fired its solid-fueled Hwasong-18 ICBM.The launch on Thursday was the North’s first major weapons test since September, when it fired a new type of Hwasong-11 short-range ballistic missile, which it said could carry a “super-large” conventional warhead weighing 4.5 tons.On Wednesday, South Korean defense intelligence officials told lawmakers that North Korea might conduct long-range missile tests before the American presidential election next week. They also said that the North was preparing to conduct its seventh underground nuclear test, in a bid to raise tensions and gain diplomatic leverage with the next U.S. president. North Korea conducted its last nuclear test in 2017.In recent weeks, North Korea has posed a fresh security challenge to Washington and its allies by sending an estimated 11,000 troops to Russia to fight in its war against Ukraine. Thousands of them, outfitted with Russian uniforms and equipment, have moved closer to the front lines, preparing themselves for possible battle against Ukrainian troops, South Korean and American officials said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More