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.”
Parts of the Kursk region have been under Ukrainian control since August, when Ukraine’s military mounted a surprise cross-border offensive and quickly captured approximately 500 square miles of land, including the town of Sudzha.
At the time, the move was seen as an attempt to stretch Russian forces thin across multiple fronts, especially as Ukrainian forces were steadily losing ground elsewhere on their own territory. Holding Russian territory was also seen as a potential bargaining chip for Ukraine in any eventual cease-fire talks.
Russian forces, bolstered by North Korean soldiers, have been battling to try to retake the land and recently stepped up an offensive to push Ukrainian troops out of the region, as Kyiv reeled from the Trump administration’s decision to freeze U.S. intelligence and military assistance to Ukraine.
With the situation in Sudzha increasingly precarious for Ukraine’s troops, in recent days Ukrainian officials have suggested an openness to a retreat. In his statement on Wednesday night, General Syrsky said that Ukrainian forces would be moving to “more advantageous positions” if necessary. He added that his “priority has been and remains the preservation of Ukrainian soldiers’ lives.”
Late Wednesday night, President Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk. He praised the Russian military formations that had taken back much of the territory captured by Ukraine in the region and called on the troops to seize back all the territory occupied by Ukraine in Kursk for good.
Russia has been intensifying its military operations in the area, launching 334 artillery strikes and 29 air attacks overnight, including dropping 33 bombs from aircraft, according to the Ukrainian military’s general staff.
Sudzha had a population of around 5,000 before Ukraine’s incursion. A Ukrainian official said that in its efforts to retake Sudzha, Russia’s military had employed the same tactics it had used in its assaults on Ukrainian towns — launching heavy bombardments that inflict heavy damage.
“The Russian army has almost completely destroyed the town of Sudzha with airstrikes. The town and its surroundings are devastated, with few civilian structures left standing,” Andriy Kovalenko, a senior Ukrainian official focused on Russian disinformation operations, wrote in a Telegram post.
Russian state television stations on Thursday ran footage that they said was from Sudzha that showed destroyed schools, charred grocery stores and mined streets.
While Russian forces have regained significant ground in the Kursk region in recent weeks, their advances in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine have slowed to a near stop, with no major territorial gains reported for either side in the past few weeks.
Nataliia Novosolova and Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting.
