Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking military officer, said on Wednesday that Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk Oblast have been encircled and are now isolated amid reports that Ukrainian forces have begun to evacuate the Russian region.
Ukraine launched a Western-backed invasion of Kursk last August, but after taking some territory, Russian troops began gradually pushing back the Ukrainians. In recent days, Russia has made a major push and is now rapidly gaining territory in Kursk.
Gerasimov said that in the past five days, Russia had taken control of 24 settlements and 259 square kilometers of territory in Kursk. He also claimed that the Ukrainian military had suffered 67,000 casualties in the Russian oblast.
According to Reuters, both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers are reporting that Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the region. “Ukraine’s Armed Forces are leaving Kursk. There will be no Ukrainian soldier there by Friday,” Skadovskyi Defender, a Ukrainian military blogger, wrote on Telegram.
Yaroslav Trofimov, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, wrote on X on Wednesday that after seven months of combat in Kursk, the “Ukrainian forces are withdrawing from the Russian region of Kursk.”
Russia’s gains in Kursk come amid a push from the US to get Russia to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. Ukrainian officials had previously said that the purpose of the invasion of Kursk, which took forces away from the front in eastern Ukraine, was to gain leverage for negotiations.
POLITICO reported back in September 2025, about a month and a half into the invasion of Kursk, that top Ukrainian military officers urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky not to go through with the offensive. One officer objected because the invading brigade would be too exposed inside Russia and would suffer heavy casualties.
