Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited Russia's Kursk region for the first time since Moscow said it had pushed Ukrainian forces out of the region, the Kremlin said today.
The Russian military said its forces had fully regained control of areas seized by Ukraine in the border region of Russia in mid-April - almost nine months after the surprise Ukrainian invasion.
Ukraine rejects the claims and says its troops are still present in the Kursk region. The loss of the Kursk region would deprive Kiev of a key bargaining chip in the US-brokered effort to negotiate an end to the more than three-year conflict by exchanging areas captured by Ukraine for Ukrainian areas occupied by Russia.
The Associated Press presents key moments from the battle for Kursk and its aftermath:
Ukrainian forces invaded Kursk region on August 6, 2024, in a surprise attack, after hardened mechanized units quickly overpowered lightly armed Russian border guards and inexperienced recruits. Hundreds were taken prisoner.
The invasion was a humiliating blow to the Kremlin - the first time since World War II that the country's territory had been occupied by an invader.
The offensive was planned in complete secrecy, with the participating Ukrainian soldiers reportedly informed of their mission only a day before it began. Russian drones and reconnaissance assets were concentrated on the battlefields in eastern Ukraine, allowing Kiev to move its troops secretly towards the border under the cover of dense forests.
Ukrainian units quickly advanced deep into the Kursk region in several directions, encountering little resistance and sowing chaos and panic.
With the most capable Russian units fighting in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, Moscow did not have enough ground forces to defend the Kursk region and other border areas.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the incursion as a way to distract Russian forces in the east and said that Kiev could potentially exchange its gains for Russian-occupied territory as part of peace talks.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrsky, said that Kiev's forces have seized nearly 1,300 sq. km and about 100 settlements in the region, which covers 29,900 sq. km. Unlike the static front lines in Donetsk, Ukrainian units have been able to move around the region without establishing a permanent presence in many of the settlements they have captured.
While the invasion achieved a much-needed boost to Ukraine's morale amid its battlefield setbacks, skeptics saw it as a dangerous gamble that diverted some of its most capable forces from the Donetsk region, where Kiev was steadily losing ground to the Russian offensive.
In the early days of the offensive, Russia relied on warplanes and helicopters, as it lacked the ground forces to stop the offensive.
At the same time, Moscow began to attract heterogeneous reinforcements from across Russia, some of which lacked combat experience and were difficult to coordinate with each other, which contributed to Ukraine's rapid successes.
Contrary to Kiev's hopes, however, the invasion did not force Moscow to transfer a significant number of troops there. Since Russia lacked the resources to quickly push back Ukrainian forces, it focused on stopping the deeper Ukrainian advance by sealing roads and attacking Kiev's reserves.
In the fall, Ukraine, the United States, and South Korea said that North Korea, which had previously supplied weapons to Moscow, had sent 10,000-12,000 troops to Russia to fight in the Kursk region.
Initially, Moscow and Pyongyang reacted evasively to reports of the North Korean deployment, emphasizing that their military cooperation was in accordance with international law without openly acknowledging the presence of North Korean troops. Last month, however, they confirmed their deployment.
During his report to Putin on the retaken areas in the Kursk region on April 26, the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, said that North Korean soldiers had participated in “combat missions side by side with Russian servicemen during the repulsion of the Ukrainian invasion“.
In a statement published on the Kremlin website two days later, Putin praised the North Korean soldiers, saying “the Russian people will never forget“ their heroism.
“We will always honor the heroes who gave their lives for Russia, for our common freedom, fighting shoulder to shoulder with their Russian brothers in arms,“ Putin said.
Although North Korean soldiers are highly disciplined and well-trained, Ukraine and its allies have said they suffered heavy losses from drone and artillery attacks due to their lack of combat experience and unfamiliar terrain.
In January, South Korea's National Intelligence Service said about 300 North Korean soldiers had been killed and another 2,700 wounded. Zelensky had previously put the number of North Koreans killed and wounded at 4,000, although US estimates were lower at around 1,200.
South Korean intelligence said in February that North Korea had apparently sent additional troops to Russia.
In the fall, the Kremlin reinforced Russian forces in the Kursk region, and they gradually accelerated their efforts to push the Ukrainians out.
By February, Russia had regained about two-thirds of the territory it had seized, leaving Ukraine with the area around Sudzha, a border town that had been the main logistical hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.
The pressure on Ukrainian troops increased sharply in March, when Russian forces attempted to cut off a corridor between Sudzha and Ukraine's Sumy region on the other side of the border. Russian artillery and drones relentlessly shelled the road, which was littered with corpses and destroyed military equipment, making it difficult for Ukraine to transport supplies and rotate troops.
The disruption of supply routes put Ukrainian forces in a difficult position, said Michael Koffman of the Carnegie Endowment. “As the Kursk Bulge was squeezed, it became increasingly unstable,” he noted.
In a daring military operation in early March, 600 Russian soldiers crawled 15km through a gas pipeline and emerged near Sudzha to strike Ukrainian troops from the rear.
The operation came as the US suspended arms supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, a move that followed a heated White House meeting on February 28 between Zelensky and US President Donald Trump. After talks with Ukraine on March 11, when Kiev agreed to accept a 30-day ceasefire proposal, the United States said it was freezing aid.
In April, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine rejected Moscow's claim that it had regained full control of the Kursk region and today published a map showing that Ukrainian troops were still present in small parts of the region near the border.
Losing control of the captured territories in the Kursk region would weaken Kiev's position in peace talks, removing the bargaining chip for exchanging territory lost earlier in the war.
Russia holds about a fifth of Ukraine's territory, and a defeat for Kiev in the Kursk region would also raise the threat of a further advance by Moscow into Ukraine's border region of Sumy.
During a visit to the Russian military headquarters in the Kursk region last month Putin has set the task of establishing a "security zone" along the border, a signal that the Russian military is considering a possible incursion into the Sumy region.
In late April, Gerasimov said that efforts to create a security zone in the border areas of the Sumy region were continuing and that the Russian military controlled over 90 sq. km there.
Translation from English with abbreviations: Alexey Margoevsky, BTA