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 that it 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 apparent 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 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 Ukraine’s military said on Friday that “there is no threat of encirclement of our units,” calling the suggestion “false and fabricated by the Russians.”
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.”
Russia and Ukraine have both been ramping up their attacks. Overnight, Russia launched two Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 178 drones at Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian authorities said. The missiles struck a residential district in Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine, injuring 14 people, including two children, according to the local authorities.
The fighting has been fiercest of late in the Kursk region, where Russia hopes to eject Ukrainian forces from its territory, particularly given the possibility of a cease-fire. As the battlefield in Kursk shifted, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain was convening a virtual summit on Saturday of global leaders committed to aiding Ukraine.
While Ukraine reeled from a temporary cutoff of U.S. military aid and intelligence assistance last week, Moscow stepped up its efforts to retake Kursk, escalating attacks in the area and on Ukraine’s side of the border in the Sumy region.
The Russian attacks there have included attempts to enter Ukrainian territory using small sabotage groups and increased shelling of the border and the regional capital, the city of Sumy, according to Ukrainian officials. A total of 161 explosions were reported in the region over the last night, officials said.
Shahed drones also targeted critical infrastructure in Sumy, leading to power outages and disruptions to the water supply, they said.
Small assault groups from Russia entered the northern border region of Ukraine on Friday but were pushed out, Andriy Demchenko, the spokesman for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, said in a phone interview.
“Their task is to break through and wedge their way in, but so far they haven’t succeeded,” Mr. Demchenko said.
He said that Russian forces had tried to use armored vehicles and three all-terrain vehicles to break through the border but had been unsuccessful. In their latest attempt, soldiers tried to enter Ukrainian territory on foot in small groups of up to five soldiers, he said.
Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that Russian engineering forces had begun demining areas that its forces had retaken in the Kursk region near the border with Ukraine.
