After eight months of fighting on Russian soil, Ukrainian troops are pulling back from the Kursk region. This morning, Russian forces raised their flag over Sudzha and are now closing in on the last 50 square miles of Ukrainian holdouts. The retreat couldn’t come at a worse time for Kyiv – just as a ceasefire and potential peace deal are on the table. Zelensky had hoped to trade the Kursk salient for Ukrainian land in negotiations. Now, that leverage is almost gone.
Russian troops, reinforced by North Koreans, have been steadily clawing back the 500 square miles of Russian territory seized by Ukraine last August. But the real breakthrough came in the past two weeks, as Russian forces gained fire control over the only paved road linking Sudzha to Ukraine’s Sumy region, choking off Ukrainian logistics and burning down supply convoys with drone strikes.
While Russians pressed the flanks, storming Ukrainian positions on motorcycles, quad bikes and even golf carts – driving straight over minefields – about a hundred soldiers spent two days crawling through an empty gas pipeline to slip behind Ukrainian lines near Sudzha. Ukraine’s military insisted they weren’t caught off guard, posting videos where they bombed the Russians as they emerged. But the advances from all sides still left Ukrainian troops at risk of encirclement. One by one, brigades were ordered to pull back, with some soldiers forced to march dozens of miles on foot.
Was the operation worth it? That depends on how you look at it. The Kursk offensive marked the first incursion on Russian soil since the second world war and successfully drew 60,000 Russian troops into bombing their own territory instead of Ukraine. It exposed poor Russian defences and humiliated Vladimir Putin, who had to seek help from North Korea to reclaim Russian land. It also gave Ukraine a much-needed morale boost after more than a year of bloody defence. But the cost was high: Volodymyr Zelensky pulled elite units from the Donetsk region to reinforce the push across the border, weakening Ukraine’s eastern front and paving the way for Russia to seize territory three times the size of Kyiv last year.
Now, the fall of the Kursk salient will play straight into Donald Trump’s narrative that Ukraine ‘doesn’t have any cards’ at the negotiating table. Three years of full-scale war have drained any realistic hope of expelling Russian troops from all Ukrainian lands, and Zelensky’s gamble – that Putin would have to make concessions to restore the pre-Kursk boundaries – has failed. The issue of land will be central to the negotiations with Russia, with Putin insisting that Ukraine surrender four regions and Zelensky refusing to cede an inch. With Kursk lost, Zelensky’s standing now looks much weaker.
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