KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday Ukraine’s army was still fighting in Russia’s Kursk despite Moscow claiming the “liberation” of its western region, as Washington signalled a “critical week” ahead for negotiations.
Kyiv had hoped it could use land in the Kursk region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Russia, which has seized parts of eastern and southern Ukraine since launching its offensive in February 2022.
“Our military continues to perform tasks in the Kursk and Belgorod regions — we are maintaining our presence on Russian territory,” he said in his evening address Sunday.
In a statement earlier Sunday, he conceded that the situation remained difficult in many areas including Kursk.
Russia said on Saturday it had captured Gornal, the last settlement under Ukrainian control in its border Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a shock offensive in August 2024.
Yet hours later Ukraine’s army dismissed Russia’s claim as “propaganda tricks.”
Several Russian military bloggers who closely monitor the conflict also said fighting was still ongoing around the forests on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
And a local Russian army commander in Kursk said the army was still conducting operations in the region, according to a state TV broadcast aired on Sunday.
“The situation on the front lines and the actual activities of the Russian army prove that the current pressure on Russia to end this war is not enough,” Zelensky said Sunday.
He called for increased pressure on Russia to create more opportunities for “real diplomacy.”
On Saturday, Zelensky discussed a potential ceasefire with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral at the Vatican.
After their brief talk in St. Peter’s Basilica, Trump cast doubt over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted an end to the war, which has devastated swathes of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people.
The following night, Russia launched drone and missile attacks, killing four people in regions across eastern Ukraine and wounding more than a dozen.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the importance of the coming week.
“We’re close, but we’re not close enough” to a deal to halt the fighting, Rubio told broadcaster NBC on Sunday. “I think this is going to be a very critical week.”
Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday Ukraine should not agree to all territorial concessions to Russia reportedly set out in the deal proposed by Trump.
“Ukraine has, of course, known for some time that a sustainable, credible ceasefire or peace agreement may involve territorial concessions,” he told broadcaster ARD.
“But these will certainly not go... as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president,” Pistorius said.
Washington has not revealed details of its peace plan, but has suggested freezing the front line and accepting Russian control of Crimea in exchange for peace.
When he claimed that Russia had recaptured all of Kursk from Ukraine, Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov praised the “heroism” of the North Korean soldiers who fought for Russia in the campaign.
It was the first time Moscow had admitted their participation in the conflict.
In August 2024, the Ukrainian army entered Kursk in an unprecedented counter-offensive on Russian soil. Among other gains, they seized a pumping station through which Russian gas used to flow to Europe.
Since then, Moscow has forced Kyiv’s soldiers onto the defensive, gradually recapturing much of the region.
After Ukraine was temporarily deprived of key US intelligence in March 2025, Russia redoubled its efforts, including through a surprise covert operation using an underground gas pipeline, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Russia has said that after Kursk’s recapture it will keep advancing in the four Ukrainian regions it claimed to have annexed in 2022.
Moscow was also planning to create a “buffer zone” in Ukraine’s Sumy region, which borders Russia, said Gerasimov.
Russia holds about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including the Crimean peninsula which Moscow annexed in 2014.