Russia pushed Ukrainian forces out of most of the territory they controlled in the Russian region of Kursk during the past week, raising questions about whether a weeklong US intelligence cutoff materially helped the Russian counterattack.
The US said it had restored intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine on Tuesday night, after Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire plan discussed in Riyadh for nine-and-a-half hours.
Russian efforts to recapture Kursk intensified on March 6, a day after the White House cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine.
Russian forces attacked 32 times in Kursk, said Ukraine’s general staff.
According to Russian military reporters, Russia had prioritised that front, moving some of its best drone operators there and deploying electronic warfare to prevent Ukrainian drone counterattacks.
The effort became clearer on Friday, March 7, when Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian border areas in Sumy for the first time since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, in an attempt to encircle Ukrainian forces in Kursk from the south and cut off their supply lines.
On Saturday, Russian forces captured several settlements north of Sudzha, the main Ukrainian stronghold in Kursk, and began to fire upon Sudzha itself. One Russian operation involved infiltrating the industrial zone by making soldiers crawl inside a gas pipeline.
The UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported Ukraine was considering a withdrawal to avoid encirclement, but Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, on Monday said, “There is no threat of encirclement of Ukrainian units in the Kursk region.”
He did, however, send drone and electronic warfare reinforcements.
By Tuesday, Russia’s defence ministry announced it had recaptured more than 100sq km (40sq miles) in Kursk, including a dozen settlements.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told media on Wednesday that Sudzha had been liberated.
“The data from our military shows that our troops have been successfully progressing in the Kursk region as they liberate those areas that have been controlled by [Ukrainian] militants,” he said.
Later on Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk for the first time in months and a day later, the Kremlin claimed Moscow’s operation in Kursk was in its final stage.
Ukraine caught Russia off-guard in its August counter-invasion last year, and succeeded in leveraging a single division of 11,000 soldiers to pin down an estimated 78,000 Russian soldiers, slowing Russia’s advances in east Ukraine, embarrassing Putin and forcing him to reportedly seek the help of 12,000 North Korean mercenaries last November.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, assessed that Russian forces had managed to recapture 655sq km (250sq miles) by last month, more than half the Kursk territory Ukraine had held at the height of its operation.
Ukraine launched surprise offensives in early January and February to consolidate its positions, demonstrating the importance it placed on Kursk as an active defence.
