Russia wants the Ukrainians to take back territory in Kursk before negotiating an end to the war, but Ukraine won’t budge

Russian president Vladimir Putin He does not want Kursk to be used as a bargaining chip — nor does he want to be forced to give up any of the Ukrainian territory he has captured since the Russian invasion, Remchukov added. Putin’s recent statements that any deal must reflect the “reality on the ground” point to Russia’s hopes of retaking Kursk, he said.

Over the past week, the Kremlin has dramatically stepped up its maximalist rhetoric on peace negotiations, implying that it will be no more willing to make concessions to a new Trump administration than to President Joe Biden.

In an interview with Russian state television on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to preemptively reject any proposals to freeze the conflict and current frontlines – as proposed by those around Trump – calling the suggestion “even worse” than those from Minsk. agreements that followed the 2014 war in eastern Ukraine.

Russian military blogger and propagandist Mikhail Zvinchuk, who founded the Telegram channel Rybar, said Trump might try to pressure Moscow with the Ukrainian occupation of Kursk, but that he expects it to be resolved in the coming weeks or months recaptured.

“I believe that in any case the Kursk issue will be resolved before Trump’s inauguration,” he said, describing the recent Russian attack as the third wave of an ongoing counter-offensive that he claims will deplete Ukrainian reserves and logistics the neighboring Sumy region. in Ukraine and enabled the Russian reconquest of several settlements.

Ukrainian forces captured between 1,000 and 1,500 square kilometers in the first two weeks of the Kursk operation in August, said Pasi Paroinen, an analyst at Black Bird Group, an open-source intelligence analysis collective based in Helsinki. Russia has been steadily counter-attacking since then, and with an attack underway from three directions, he predicted that Ukrainian-held territory would shrink further in the coming days.

Not smooth sailing

But the latest attack did not go smoothly for the Russians, according to the Ukrainian troops. After more than a week of brutal fighting, they say, Russia has made only small gains and lost significant numbers of troops and equipment along the way.

Despite the increased pressure, the Ukrainians say they are largely holding the line.

Oleksandr, 39, who works on intelligence for the 82nd Brigade in the Kursk region, said Ukrainian forces had destroyed more than 50 Russian vehicles, including APCs and tanks, in recent days. Russian soldiers kept repeating their mistakes, he said, such as driving on roads controlled by Ukrainian firepower, missing turns and even firing on their own infantry positions.

Amid ongoing reports of Russians brutalizing captured Ukrainians, he himself witnessed the killing of captured soldiers in real time through drone footage. He spoke on condition that he would be identified only by his first name due to military regulations.

On Monday, Oleksandr saw Russian soldiers take over a Ukrainian position, capture and then shoot dead two soldiers, in footage later verified by The Washington Post.

In retaliation, Oleksandr said, the Ukrainian command post launched a series of drones at the Russians to try to kill the Russian forces and destroy their vehicle.

During those few minutes, “the Russians who executed our prisoners were our most priority target,” Oleksandr said, adding that Ukraine later retook the position. “But you don’t have enough time to think about this much because you have work to do; you have other Russians who need to be killed.”

Artem Efanov, a drone operator with the 82nd Brigade who spoke via video chat from a dugout between missions in Kursk, said he had seen Russian troops trapped in swamps, swamps and rivers, with muddy terrain making it it was difficult for them to advance successfully. .

“We are holding the lines,” Efanov said. “It has become more difficult, but we have the resources.”

Recent rare protests by displaced residents of Kursk have shown that Ukraine’s invasion has caused significant internal problems for Russia, Efanov said. The latest Russian attack likely has less to do with Trump, he said, and more to do with Putin’s “political ambition to say ‘we can handle it, we can liberate the Kursk region in three days,’ just as they planned to do in Kiev to occupy. in three days”.

Photos and videos from more than half a dozen villages north and south of Sudzha verified by The mail Over the past week, it has emerged that Russian vehicles faced fierce resistance from the Ukrainians as they attempted to push further into Kursk. In a drone video recorded on Wednesday, a Russian MT-LB, a type of armored vehicle, is hit as it drives south past the village of Novoivanovka. Soldiers roll out of the vehicle as the vehicle bursts into flames as the vehicle continues to drive towards an intersection before being hit again. Two more soldiers leave the burning vehicle and run to take cover in the woods.

Other images show the aftermath of battles and attacks on small convoys of Russian armored vehicles. “The Russians are increasing the pace of their operations and increasing the size and scale of their armored attacks in a likely effort to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders and drive Ukrainian forces from Kursk,” said George Barros, a geospatial and Russian analyst at the Institute for the Kursk. Study of war.

Putin’s winning streak

While Kiev publicly rejects suggestions of trading land for peace, it is also keeping an eye on Trump’s incoming presidency and is as eager to keep Kursk on the table as Russia is to fend it off.

However, there are growing questions about why Putin, whose forces are advancing on all fronts, would even consider negotiations that could hinder his original goal of seizing control of all of Ukraine.

“Putin probably believes he is on a winning streak and why would he negotiate now, so his demands are likely to be extremely high,” said Camille Grand, a former deputy secretary general of NATO and now a senior policy fellow at the European Union Council for Foreign Affairs. Relations.

It remains to be seen whether Putin’s declarations of maximalist demands are a negotiating tactic or “whether he means it because he has put so much into this war that ending a compromise will not be acceptable to him,” he said.

In any move toward negotiations, much will depend on “whether Putin wants to take his chips and more or less accept Trump’s proposals, or whether his conclusion is that Trump is going to dump Ukraine, so let’s move on,” Gerard Araud said , a former French ambassador to Washington.

Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Ukraine likely sees Kursk as a potential future lever in the negotiations, but the downside is that the operation has significantly burdened its military.

Ukrainian losses in the eastern Donetsk region increased from mid-August to mid-September, analysts said, as experienced units left their positions and focused on the Kursk operation.

Russian troops in Ukraine have advanced faster in the past three months than at any time since 2022, Lee said.

With winter approaching, the foliage is already thinning, making camouflage more difficult in a war where drones are already watching your every move. Muddy swamps may soon freeze over. Ukraine will have to decide where to prioritize its limited troops and weapons, Lee warned.

‘Where are they sending reinforcements? Because if you concentrate on holding Kursk, it could put other parts of the front in greater danger,” he said.