President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine on Saturday accused President Vladimir Putin of Russia of trying to surround Ukraine’s forces in Russia’s Kursk region to improve his position amid ceasefire talks with the United States, but said Ukraine’s forces had not been trapped.
Russia’s Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its forces had retaken two villages outside Sudzha, the main Russian town that Ukraine occupied in the Kursk region. The Ukrainian general staff has not publicly commented on Russia’s capture of Sudzha. But on Saturday morning, it released a map of the battlefield showing the town outside Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Kursk region.
Fighting is raging in and around the part of the Kursk region that Ukraine seized in a surprise offensive into Russian territory last summer. The Kremlin is pressing an advancing offensive to take back its land there, while prolonging negotiations over a ceasefire that the United States and Ukraine proposed this past week.
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