KYIV: Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky denied Saturday his troops were encircled in Russia’s Kursk region, where Moscow has regained swathes of land this week, as Russia said it took back two more villages in the border region.
US leader Donald Trump had a day earlier asked Russia’s Vladimir Putin on social media to spare the lives of Ukrainian troops that he said were “completely surrounded” by the Russian army.
Moscow has pushed this week to retake a large part of the land that Ukraine originally captured in its western Kursk region last summer.
Zelensky has acknowledged that the situation in the Kursk area is “very difficult” for Ukraine, but contradicted Trump’s comments.
“There is no encirclement of out troops,” he said on social media, adding that: “Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region.”
Kyiv had hoped to use the Russian territories as a bargaining chip in any negotiations to end the more than three-year conflict.
The UK on Saturday hosted a virtual summit on how to protect any ceasefire in Ukraine, but Zelensky warned that Moscow was intent on “prolonging the war” and “ignoring diplomacy.”
He also accused Moscow of amassing troops on the border with “an intention to attack our Sumy region” — attacked by Moscow at the start of its 2022 invasion but since spared the worst of the fighting seen in other eastern regions.
Putin had this week not committed to an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine proposed by the US, instead putting forward conditions and raising “serious questions” about the idea.
The Kremlin has hailed its troops ousting Ukrainian forces from swathes of the Kursk region, with Moscow on Saturday releasing images of a destroyed center in Sudzha — the main town occupied by Ukrainian forces for months.
The Russian defense ministry said troops took control over the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina — north and west of Sudzha.
Sudzha was home to around 6,000 people before fighting began and Ukraine had set up a military administration there after its shock August 2024 incursion.
The Russian defense ministry’s footage showed heavily destroyed houses and shops, with rubble and broken glass on the streets, and some Russian flags flying.
The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinstein, said Russia had evacuated 275 civilians from areas it had regained since Wednesday.
Khinstein said “174 of the residents are now in temporary accommodation” and that the “work of evacuating our residents is continuing.”
The Kremlin has hailed the Kursk operations as a major success.
Responding to Trump’s call to spare Ukrainian troops in Kursk region, Putin said Friday:
“If they lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and dignified treatment.”
Russia’s defense ministry also said that military engineers were working to clear the areas that were held by Ukraine.
Russia had also deployed almost 200 firefighters to help put out a fire at an oil depot caused by a Ukraine drone strike in the southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.
The governor of the Krasnodar region Veniamin Kondratyev said in the early hours of Saturday that a petrol reserve station in the Black Sea city of Tuapse was “attacked by the Kyiv regime.”
Elsewhere on the front, Zelensky claimed the situation around the eastern city of Pokrovsk — which Russian troops have tried to capture for months — had “stabilized.”
Ukrainian officials also said the number of wounded from a Russian strike a day earlier on Zelensky’s hometown Kryvy Rig rose to 14.
Moscow has targeted the central city throughout its invasion and Kyiv said Friday it struck a residential area of Kryvy Rig, destroying large apartment buildings.
Ukrainian prosecutors said the wounded children were a two-year-old and a 15-year-old.