MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Friday it had recaptured another village in its Kursk region, where it is seeking to finally expel Ukrainian troops after nearly eight months of fighting.
But pro-Moscow military bloggers expressed concern about the situation in Belgorod, an adjacent region of Russia where Ukrainian troops staged an incursion this month.
In Kursk, the Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had recaptured the village of Gogolevka, one of only a handful of settlements still held by Ukraine out of around 100 that it seized last August.
Ukraine’s General Staff said its military had stopped 18 Russian assaults in Kursk region over the past day. It did not comment on the situation in Belgorod.
Open source mapping from Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian military blogging resource, showed Russian forces in control of some but not all of Gogolevka, and indicated Kyiv’s troops still controlled just under 80 square kilometres of Kursk.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.
President Vladimir Putin visited Kursk this month in a sign of increasing confidence that Russia will shortly win it back, depriving Ukraine of a bargaining chip in future peace talks that the United States is trying to arrange.
In Belgorod, Russia first said on March 18 that Ukrainian units had tried to push across the border. As of Friday, several of Russia’s influential war bloggers said Ukrainian groups were maintaining a foothold inside the region.
One of them, Arkhangel Spetsnaza, said Ukrainian troops were still present in the settlement of Popovka, and fighting continued, adding that “the situation remains tense”.
Another, Rybar, said there had been heavy clashes in Popovka and each side was hitting the other with drones.
A third blog, Two Majors, said Russian forces were continuing defensive operations in the region.
“There are constant strikes on concentrations of Ukrainian Armed Forces, but the enemy still has serious offensive potential for this direction and has not abandoned plans for further breakthroughs, including in new areas of the front,” Two Majors posted on Telegram.
(Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Maxim Rodionov in London and Anastasiia Malenko in Kyiv; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
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