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Vladimir Putin has visited Kursk for the first time since his forces expelled most of Ukraine’s forces from the frontline region, in a show of confidence as Russia presses its advantage in the years-long invasion.
Russia’s president on Tuesday met Kursk’s governor, local politicians and volunteers helping civilians displaced by the fighting, according to footage published by the Kremlin on Wednesday. Moscow said last month it had retaken full control of the region — a claim denied by Ukraine, which first took parts of Kursk in August.
Putin last visited the border region in March, donning military fatigues for the only time since ordering the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and visiting a command post.
The Russian president did not directly comment on his army’s battlefield progress or US attempts to broker peace talks with Ukraine, after rejecting Kyiv’s calls for a 30-day truce.
US President Donald Trump signalled on Monday that he was abandoning efforts to secure a ceasefire after a call with Putin, who has refused to drop his hardline demands. The Russian president has insisted on terms that would essentially end Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign state and roll back most of Nato’s expansion east of the Iron Curtain.
When meeting the Kursk volunteers, Putin continued the comparisons of Ukraine to Nazi Germany that he has frequently used to justify the invasion. He alleged Kyiv’s forces had “neo-Nazi ideology” and wanted to “wipe out historical memory of who we are and where we are from”, implying Russia and Ukraine are the same nation.
At another meeting, Putin joked approvingly after a local official said the nearby Ukrainian city of Sumy “should be ours”. It was the second time in less than a week that Russian officials had threatened to seize the Sumy region, which served as the launch pad for Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk.
In last week’s peace talks in Istanbul, the Russian delegation’s leader warned they could invade and capture Sumy and Kharkiv, a Ukrainian official told the Financial Times.
Ukrainian officials said their adversaries made “unacceptable” demands during the “intense” talks.
The demands went beyond those made during the first contentious Istanbul peace talks in 2022, said one Ukrainian official. Russia threatened to step up military operations if Kyiv refused to hand over territory, including the major cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the official said.
The Russian delegation chief said more of the Ukrainians’ relatives could die if they did not concede, the Ukrainian official said, an apparent reference to first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, whose nephew was killed in battle in 2022.
Moscow appears to be making preparations for a summer offensive, Ukrainian officials and military analysts said. Russian advances have increased in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk, threatening the cities of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka, which are strategic logistics hubs.
Ukraine’s General Staff said this week military operations continue in Kursk “to provide a buffer zone” inside Russia “in order to prevent a new offensive campaign by the enemy in the Sumy and Kharkiv directions”.
Ukraine holds less than 30 sq km in the Kursk region, having captured around 1,000 sq km in its incursion in August, according to Deep State, a group of Ukrainian analysts with ties to the military who map the battlefield.
A Russian missile attack killed six servicemen in the Sumy region on Tuesday and injured at least 10 more during training exercises, the Ukrainian National Guard said on Wednesday. A commander has been suspended and an internal investigation launched to determine why the soldiers had been exposed, the National Guard said.
Drone footage published by Russian state news agency Tass showed dozens of clustered Ukrainian soldiers marching on a paved pathway.
The National Guard said it had previously introduced measures for all of Ukraine’s armed forces to prevent mass casualties caused by Russian attacks on large troop gatherings. A Russian missile attack in April killed 35 people, most of them civilians, during a military awards ceremony in Sumy’s city centre.
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