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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Ukraine launched last summer to seize and occupy Russian territory appears to be nearing an end.Ukrainian troops have withdrawn from all but a sliver of land in Russia’s Kursk region, according to military analysts and soldiers, as their monthslong campaign to seize and occupy Russian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a swift Russian advance backed by relentless airstrikes and drone assaults, Ukrainian troops over the past week have withdrawn from several villages in the Kursk region as well as from Sudzha, the main town under their control.The Ukrainian military command said that the troops had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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      During Ukraine’s Incursion, Russian Conscripts Recount Surrendering in Droves

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      They were lanky and fresh-faced, and the battle they lost had been their first.Packed into Ukrainian prison cells, dozens of captured Russian conscripts lay on cots or sat on wooden benches, wearing flip-flops and, in one instance, watching cartoons on a television provided by the warden.In interviews, they recalled abandoning their positions or surrendering as they found themselves facing well-equipped, battle-hardened Ukrainian forces streaming across their border.“We ran into a birch grove and hid,” said Pvt. Vasily, whose small border fort was overrun on Aug. 6 — at the outset of a Ukrainian incursion into Russia that was the first significant foreign attack on the country since World War II. The New York Times is identifying the prisoners by only their first names and ranks for their safety if they are returned to Russia in a prisoner exchange.The fighting marked a significant shift in the war, with Ukrainian armored columns rumbling into Russia two and a half years after Russia had launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine.Russia’s border, it turned out, was defended thinly, largely by young conscripted soldiers who in interviews described surrendering or abandoning their positions. Private Vasily said he had survived by lying in the birch forest near the Russian border for three days, covered in branches and leaves, before deciding to surrender.“I never thought it would happen,” he said of the Ukrainian attack.The Russian military command had, by all signs, made the same assumption, manning its border defenses with green conscripts, some drafted only months earlier. Their defeat and descriptions of surrendering in large numbers could increase Ukraine’s leverage in possible settlement talks and lead to prisoner exchanges.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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      Rebellious Russians Attack From Ukraine, Reinforcing Ukrainian Drone Strikes

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      The surprise attacks, timed to Russia’s election, are meant to undermine the sense of stability in Russia and divert the country’s military resources from Ukraine.Gathered in a Ukrainian farmhouse, soldiers checked their kits: rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, spare batteries for radios, red and white flashlights, all that would be needed for a stealthy and daring night assault across the border into Russia.The soldiers are Russians who have turned against the government of their country’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and are now fighting for the Ukrainian side by making incursions back into Russia.Their goal has been to break through a first line of Russian defenses, hoping to open a path for another unit to drive deeper into Russia with tanks and armored personnel carriers.“We will jump in their trench and hold it,” one of the soldiers, who declined to be identified for security reasons, explained. “Either we take them out, or they take us out.”By both Ukrainian and Russian accounts, fierce fighting has raged along Russia’s southern border for five days in the most sweeping ground attacks into Russia since its military invaded Ukraine two years ago.Three Russian exile groups, which were openly backed by Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, say the assaults are timed to undermine the sense of stability that underlies Mr. Putin’s quest for a fifth term, in which three days of voting wrap up on Sunday.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