MOSCOW: Russia battled on Sunday to drive the last Ukrainian soldiers from western Russia, Russian officials said, after a seven-month incursion by Ukraine that aimed to distract Moscow’s forces, gain a bargaining chip and rile President Vladimir Putin.
In one of the most striking battles of the three-year-old Ukraine war, Ukrainian forces smashed their way across Russia’s western border in Kursk last August, marking the biggest attack on sovereign Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of 1941.
But a lightning offensive this month has reduced the area under Ukrainian control to about 110 square km (42 square miles), down from the more than 1,368 square km (528 square miles) claimed by Kyiv last year, according to open source maps.
Yuri Podolyaka, one of the most influential pro-Russian military bloggers, said Russia had pushed back Ukrainian forces to the border in some areas, though intense battles were underway and that Ukrainian forces were fighting back as they retreated.
Battlefield maps from both Ukraine and Russia showed two joined pockets of Ukrainian forces on the Russian side of the border in Kursk. Russia said it was clearing large numbers of mines in the area.
After a public appeal by US President Donald Trump last week to spare “surrounded” Ukrainian troops, Putin said on Friday that Russia would guarantee the lives of Ukrainian troops in the region if they surrendered.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday his troops were not surrounded but sounded the alarm over what he said could be a new Russian attack on Ukraine’s northeast Sumy region, which borders Kursk.
The influential Two Majors pro-Russian military blogger said the battlefield gains of Russian forces had allowed Russia to threaten Sumy, but cautioned that Ukrainian forces had been bolstering defences there for some time.
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