Ukrainian tanks.
Ukrainian defense ministry photo
On Feb. 25, a flurry of accurate Russian drone strikes knocked out dozens of Ukrainian vehicles along the main road to Sudzha, the town that is—or was—the main base for the 10,000-strong Ukrainian force occupying a significant, but quickly shrinking, salient in Kursk Oblast in western Russia.
That was “the day you started worrying about Kursk,” wrote independent analyst Andrew Perpetua. Two weeks later, it seems the bulk of the Ukrainian force—including some of the Ukrainian army’s heaviest brigades—has evacuated Kursk and repositioned on the Ukrainian side of the border.
“My friends managed to leave Kursk, avoiding encirclement,” one Ukrainian source claimed Monday. “It’s sad that it came to this. But it is what it is.”
The Ukrainians invaded Kursk in August and swiftly captured hundreds of square miles. They never managed to secure a defensible lodgement on the far side of the Snahist River on the western edge of the salient, however. Their efforts to extend the salient north was complicated by Russian counterattacks around the village of Pogrebki. Efforts to extend east eventually ran into 12,000 North Korean soldiers.
Even as the Russians massed forces and achieved a three-to-one advantage in troops in Kursk late last year, the Ukrainians held on—deploying mines, drones and artillery to repeatedly repulse Russian mechanized assaults.
A mid-February assault by the Russian 155th Naval Infantry Brigade was typical. Confidently rolling toward the Ukrainian 47th Mechanized Brigades in a long column of vehicles flying the red flag of the defunct Soviet Union, the Russian marines blundered into a preplanned kill zone.
Mines blew up some of the Russian vehicles. Drones struck others and also hounded the dismounted infantry. One shell-shocked Russian crewman bailed out of his damaged vehicle, trudged a few steps through the snow, fell flat onto his back—and then exploded as a drone slammed into him.
“We are extinguishing all the enemy’s attempts to advance in Kursk,” the 47th Mechanized Brigade crowed.
At the time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky still hoped to trade the Kursk salient back to Russia during possible future ceasefire negotiations. “We will swap Ukrainian territory for Russian,” Zelensky said.
Ukrainian artillery.
Ukrainian defense ministry photo
White House chaos
But the Russia-aligned administration of U.S. President Donald Trump undermined Zelensky’s position by excluding Ukrainian diplomats from initial U.S.-Russian talks.
And on Feb. 28, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Zelensky in the Oval Office, bizarrely accusing him of being insufficiently grateful for past U.S. aid that was pledged by the previous administration—aid that Vance himself, in his previous position as a U.S. senator, voted against.
After the Oval Office clash, Trump halted all U.S. aid to Ukraine and also froze intelligence sharing between the two countries. Meanwhile, an elite Russian drone team—the Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems—deployed in Kursk.
“Rubicon employs advanced drone tactics,” Perpetua explained. Its explosive first-person-view drones seem to fly right through Ukrainian radio jamming.
Soon, the wreckage of hundreds of Ukrainian vehicles clogged the road into Sudzha. Russian warplanes targeted the bridges along the border, aiming to cut off the likeliest evacuation routes.
Yesterday, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces, assured Ukrainians “there are no threats surrounding our units in the Kursk region.” But Syrskyi didn’t promise his troops would remain in Kursk. Instead, “units are taking timely measures to maneuver on the advantageous border of defense,” the commander announced.
That may imply Ukrainian brigades are leaving Kursk, and giving up much of the terrain Zelensky hoped to trade back to Russia in exchange for a favorable ceasefire.