Russia’s top military commander said on Saturday that Moscow’s forces had retaken the last village that Ukraine was holding in the Kursk region of western Russia, though Ukrainian officials denied that their brazen campaign in the area had finally come to an end.
The Russian claim was made by Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, who has managed the invasion of Ukraine and defense of Russia as chief of the general staff. His statement came six weeks after his forces retook all but a tiny sliver of the Russian territory that Ukraine had been holding since a surprise offensive into Russia’s western Kursk region last summer.
In a televised video, General Gerasimov reported to President Vladimir V. Putin that Russian forces had on Saturday recaptured the village of Gornal, on the border with Ukraine. Speaking to Mr. Putin via a video link, General Gerasimov said that the advance had “completed the defeat of the Ukrainian armed forces that attacked the Kursk region.”
The Ukrainian General Staff denied that its forces had withdrawn fully from the region, saying the country’s military operation there was ongoing.
“The operational situation is difficult, but our units continue to hold their positions,” the General Staff said in a statement.
The expulsion of Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region could remove one of the major complications vexing the peace talks pushed by President Trump, whose special envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Mr. Putin for more than three hours in Moscow on Friday to discuss a deal that could end the conflict.
Ukrainian forces swept across the border into Kursk in August, quickly overrunning Russian positions, taking scores of prisoners and seizing the small town of Sudzha, about six miles across the border. The incursion, the first into Russian territory since World War II, was a major embarrassment for Moscow and led to some of the bloodiest clashes of the war as Ukrainian forces fought to hang on to the territory.
Officials in Kyiv argued that they ultimately could trade the Russian land for Ukrainian occupied territory in peace talks, but Moscow drew a line in the sand, saying it wouldn’t engage in any talks along those lines.
Days after Ukraine’s invasion of the region, Mr. Putin said that the attack amounted to Kyiv rejecting possible negotiations with Russia. This year, the Kremlin said the only outcome for the territory would entail Russian forces defeating Ukraine there.
Last week, Konstantin Remchukov, a prominent newspaper editor, said in a column that Mr. Putin was determined to keep fighting until Ukrainian forces were fully driven out of the Kursk region.
In the video on Saturday, General Gerasimov also noted that North Korean troops helped drive Ukrainian forces out of Russian territory. It was the first official confirmation from Russia of their involvement, which Ukrainians and independent analysts had documented.
Mr. Putin said that the Ukrainian offensive into the Kursk region “has completely failed.”
At the peak of its incursion, Ukraine controlled some 500 square miles of Russian territory. But the amount of land was not as significant as Ukraine had hoped it would be in negotiations to end the war, despite Ukraine’s efforts to highlight its gains in Russia.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine included the prospect of exchanging land as part of a plan that he presented to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the two candidates vying to replace him, Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump, on a trip to the United States in the fall.
However, by the time Mr. Trump returned to office in January, Russians forces were being assisted by thousands of North Korean troops. The North Koreans suffered grievous losses and were briefly pulled from combat to regroup, returning in early February, according to Ukrainian soldiers and officials.
By late February, Ukrainian forces had lost about two-thirds of the land they originally seized. In March, they lost Sudzha, the main town they had been holding on the Russian side of the border, and retained only a small piece of land.
Russia’s main assault on Ukrainian forces in the region came as the United States suspended both military assistance and, more significantly, intelligence sharing with Ukraine. While Ukraine’s position in Kursk was already in danger, the halt in intelligence sharing limited Ukraine’s ability to precisely target Russian command and control posts, logistics hubs and troop concentrations, American officials and Ukrainian soldiers said.
Military analysts were divided over the wisdom of the gambit from the outset.
The deployment of some of Ukraine’s best soldiers was criticized by some who thought Kyiv should have focused its resources on bolstering defenses in eastern Ukraine, especially as those lines slowly buckled last year under unrelenting Russian pressure.
But Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, argued that the incursion shifted Russia’s attention to defending its own territory. Ukrainian officials also said the Kursk offensive dispelled fear of the Kremlin’s “red lines” over attacks into Russian territory, helping to persuade the Biden administration to lift restrictions on the use of Western weapons against targets on Russian land.
Maria Varenikova contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
