Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers seized roughly 1,300 square kilometers of Russia's western Kursk region in August.
Kyiv later characterized the move as an attempt to gain a bargaining chip for future negotiations and draw Russian troops away from the front line in eastern Ukraine.
But seven months on, Ukraine is rapidly losing ground there to Russian forces backed by allied North Korean troops.
“There is a feeling that the Ukrainian armed forces are generally ready to leave the Kursk region,” Yan Matveyev, an independent military analyst, told RFE/RL.
Ukraine’s hold on territory in Kursk is more tenuous than at any other point since August, experts said.
Kyiv still controls most of Sudzha, the local district capital, and other settlements. But reports suggest that Russian forces have broken through the defensive lines north of the town in recent days.
According to reports, Russian soldiers crept through a disused underground gas pipeline to covertly penetrate Ukrainian positions in Sudzha.
Russia has also advanced in multiple areas in Ukraine along the border in recent days.
Reports say Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian village of Novenke and cut off Sudzha from the Ukrainian-controlled Russian village of Guyevo.
These advances have put Russian forces within five kilometers of Ukraine’s N07 highway, the main road used for logistics, allowing them to severely complicate the movement of Ukrainian troops and hardware.
“The enemy is trying to cut the main supply routes... the current weather hinders the creation of secondary supply routes -- it's muddy and cars get stuck in all the mud,” Anton Serbin, commander of the Ukrainian 104th Territorial Defense brigade’s drone group, told RFE/RL.
Matveyev, the military analyst, said Ukrainian forces “have problems with logistics after they lost control of some routes and roads connecting them with supplies, and they have been under intensified drone attacks in recent weeks."
Losing Kursk would be a blow to Ukraine ahead of possible peace talks pushed by US President Donald Trump.
Zelenskyy has said the territories in Kursk controlled by Kyiv could be swapped for Ukrainian territory held by Moscow.
Experts have previously suggested that Russian-occupied land in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, the only part of Ukraine where Russia holds territory without claiming it as Russian, could be regained in such a swap.
Are Russian Offensives Elsewhere On Hold?
While Russia makes gains near Sudzha, its offensive in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region has mostly stalled.
Ukrainian forces have reportedly retaken several small pockets of territory near the key logistical hub of Pokrovsk, where Russia faces major logistical issues due to Ukraine’s use of drones, experts said.
A Russian victory over Ukraine in Kursk could free up significant forces to renew the Russian push in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhya regions.
