MOSCOW (Reuters) -Moscow said on Friday that its forces had recaptured another village in their drive to dislodge Ukrainian forces from their last remaining footholds inside Russia’s Kursk region.
The defence ministry said Russian troops had retaken Goncharovka, one of only a handful of settlements still in Ukrainian hands. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Ukraine said it controlled about 100 settlements at the peak of its shock incursion into western Russia, which it launched on August 10 last year with the aim of diverting Russian forces from eastern Ukraine and securing a bargaining chip in negotiations.
But Russia’s forces, supported by troops from its ally North Korea, have gradually clawed back the lost territory, tightening the squeeze on Ukraine by cutting its supply lines.
The defence ministry said Russia had taken back 28 Kursk settlements in the past week and also captured the Ukrainian village of Novenke, located just across the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
President Vladimir Putin this week instructed his commanders to complete the task of ejecting the last Ukrainian troops as soon as possible, saying they would have to “surrender or die”. He also said that Russia should think about creating a buffer zone along the border.
A Russian military blogger, Yuri Podolyaka, said Russian forces had begun to fulfil Putin’s wish and fighting was taking place in the Ukrainian settlements of Basivka and Zhuravka.
Ukrainian border guard spokesman Andriy Demchenko said there was no significant change to the situation in Sumy region. He said small Russian assault groups were still trying to cross border and push towards Novenke and Zhuravka, and Ukraine was using all available weapons to repel them.
Russian forces have been largely absent from Ukraine’s Sumy region since April 2022, when they withdrew from the border province to refocus their forces on eastern Ukraine.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan in London and Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
