Putin visits Kursk as Russia pushes back Ukrainian troops in captured region

Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited a command post in Kursk, where his army chief told him Moscow’s forces are on the verge of retaking the Ukrainian-held border region.

Putin’s visit came just hours after Ukraine agreed to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in its war with Russia.

He ordered the army to drive Ukraine’s forces out of the region “in the shortest time possible” and consider setting up a buffer zone along the border, according to footage shown on state television on Wednesday.

Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s general staff, told Putin that Russia had captured 400 Ukrainian soldiers and retaken 86 per cent of the territory seized by Kyiv in a surprise assault last summer, after Ukraine’s defence collapsed in recent days.

Putin said prisoners should be treated “humanely” but warned any remaining Ukrainian fighters would be considered “terrorists”.

After meeting in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Ukrainian and US officials backed a month-long cessation of hostilities along the entire Ukrainian frontline.

In return, the US resumed military aid and intelligence-sharing with Kyiv that had been suspended after last month’s bust-up in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In a briefing on Wednesday, the Ukrainian president described the meeting with US officials in Jeddah as “constructive”. He said the 30-day ceasefire was a US proposal he agreed to after being in touch with his team.

“I’ve said repeatedly that none of us trust the Russians, but we’re not going to play with narratives claiming that we don’t want this war to end,” said Zelenskyy.

“I’m very serious . . . and I want the president of the US to see that,” he said. “That’s why my reaction was to say that we’re ready to the format of a 30-day truce that the American side suggested.”

The Ukrainian president said support from other countries would be needed to monitor the ceasefire along the 1,000km-long frontline.

Russian state media shared footage on Wednesday that it said showed Russian soldiers in the centre of Sudzha, the main municipality where Ukraine had set up a command centre.

In February, Zelenskyy insisted the Russian territories held by Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region could be used as a bargaining chip in peace negotiations.

“I don’t think they’ll be ready to stop in Sudzha,” said Solomiia Bobrovska, a Ukrainian opposition MP and member of the committee on national security and intelligence. “Every time the Russians have signed something, they started an offensive operation immediately”. 

DeepState, a Ukrainian war-tracking group close to Ukraine’s defence ministry, updated its map of the conflict on Wednesday afternoon showing large parts of Sudzha no longer under the control of Ukrainian forces.

Zelenskyy said on Wednesday that the Ukrainian military was continuing to carry out tasks in the Kursk region but also added that Russia had intensified its assaults.

“Our command is doing everything to preserve the lives of our troops,” he said.

For Ukraine, a ceasefire being negotiated just as Ukrainian forces suffer military setbacks has painful echoes. In February 2015, Moscow pressured Kyiv to sign a ceasefire just as its troops were surrounding the eastern Ukrainian town of Debaltseve.

Russia repeatedly violated that ceasefire agreement — a precedent Zelenskyy brought up at the White House, prompting Trump to lose his temper and conclude that the Ukrainian leader was not interested in ending the conflict.

“Putin will try to fill Trump’s ears with nothing, and Trump will have to decide what he does next,” said Mykhailo Samus, a Ukrainian military analyst. He added that the US president was likely to offer Moscow the lifting of western sanctions in exchange for a ceasefire.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Wednesday that US national security adviser Mike Waltz had spoken to his Russian counterpart. “The president’s team continues to be engaged” on the ceasefire plan, she added.

Ukrainian officials and European allies on Wednesday welcomed the restoration of US military assistance and the sharing of intelligence that Kyiv’s forces use to hit targets beyond the frontline.

“This is an important signal to the whole world that the support to Ukraine is intact,” Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s top aide and leader of the Ukrainian delegation in Jeddah, wrote on Telegram.

Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said on Wednesday that the US transit of military supplies to Ukraine via Poland had “returned to previous levels”, as had the Starlink satellite communications system owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk. Poland is paying for part of that service to Ukraine.

British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer congratulated Trump and Zelenskyy for their “remarkable breakthrough”, adding: “Russia must now agree to a ceasefire and an end to the fighting too.”

Starmer has spearheaded efforts with French President Emmanuel Macron to come up with a European “assurance force” deployed to Ukraine to deter Russia from attacking again. Starmer said he would reconvene leaders on Saturday “to discuss next steps”.

The Kremlin said it wanted to hear directly from the US before commenting on the ceasefire proposal. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia expected the US to “inform us of the details of the talks and the agreements that were reached”.

A call between Putin and Trump could be organised “very quickly”, Peskov said, but added that the White House had yet to request one.

Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service said on Wednesday that its director Sergei Naryshkin had spoken by phone with his US counterpart, CIA chief John Ratcliffe, with the two agencies agreeing to keep up regular contact. 

Konstantin Kosachev, chair of Russia’s foreign affairs committee in the upper house, said the “Ukrainians are agreeing with what they are being told”, adding that this would not be the case with Russia, because “Russia is on the offensive”.

Even as Russian forces kept pressing ahead in the Kursk region, advances on the rest of the frontline seemed to stall. Ukrainian troops managed in recent days to hold back Russian assaults around the logistical hub of Pokrovsk, and even launched daring counter-attacks towards the centre of Toretsk, an industrial city Russian forces reached in August.

On the Pokrovsk front, one drone operator reacted to the news of the suggested ceasefire with one Ukrainian word: “Pobachymo” — “We’ll see.”

Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Berlin, Raphael Minder in Warsaw and Henry Foy in Brussels; cartography by Steven Bernard