Russian forces recapture villages in Ukrainian-held pocket inside Russia

Russia has taken control of several villages in the Kursk region and claims its forces are close to surrounding thousands of Ukrainian troops fighting on Russian territory.

Ahead of talks this week between US and Ukrainian representatives in Saudi Arabia, the Russians are closing in on the Ukrainian-held Russian town of Sudzha. They have recaptured villages to the north – Staraya, Novaya Sorochina and Malaya Loknya – as well as other small settlements to the immediate east.

On Monday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy will hold talks with Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh and on Tuesday, a delegation led by Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, will meet with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, and other senior White House officials. Zelenskyy will not take part in the negotiations.

The Ukrainian side is likely to propose a peace plan sketched out by Zelenskyy last week featuring a halt to drone and missiles strikes, as well as a suspension of military activity in the Black Sea. So far, however, Vladimir Putin has showed no interest in a ceasefire.

For seven months, Ukraine has controlled a pocket inside western Russia. Last week, Russian and North Korean troops launched a major offensive, shortly after Donald Trump pulled the plug on military support, intelligence and satellite feeds with Kyiv.

There were unconfirmed reports some Ukrainian soldiers had been captured amid heavy fighting. The crucial supply road between Sudzha and Ukraine’s Sumy region is under constant Russian fire.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s general staff said it had repelled an extraordinary attack by Russian sabotage and assault groups via a gas pipeline. About 100 Russian soldiers spent four days crawling through the 15km-long pipe that leads to Sudzha’s outskirts.

Ukrainian airborne assault forces wiped out some of the Russians using artillery strikes soon after they emerged, video footage suggests. “Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. Enemy losses in the Sudzha area are very heavy,” Ukraine’s military said.

It admitted the situation was difficult but under control, with Russia employing North Korean combat units. They include replacement soldiers sent by Pyongyang after the original 11,000-strong North Korean contingent that arrived last November suffered heavy losses.

Russia’s ex-president Dmitry Medevdev claimed Kyiv’s forces were nearly surrounded and would soon be driven out. “The lid of the smoking cauldron is almost closed. The offensive continues,” he posted on Telegram.

The US appears determined to force further concessions on Ukraine before the talks in Saudi Arabia this week. According to NBC news, Trump wants Zelenskyy to yield territory to Russia and to move towards elections.

On Sunday Trump suggested that Ukraine may not be able to survive in the war against Russia even with support from the US.

In an interview with Fox News while defending his decision to draw down on support to Ukraine, he said: “Well, it may not survive anyway.”

Trump also said that Zelenskyy took money from the US under the Biden administration like “candy from a baby”. He repeated his claim that Zelenskyy was not “grateful” but did describe him as “smart” and “tough”.

Trump’s pro-Russian ally Elon Musk earlier offered a fresh warning to Kyiv. Posting on X, he wrote: “My Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their front line would collapse if I turned it off.”

His threat prompted a rebuke from Poland’s foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, who pointed out that his government had a commercial contract with Starlink and paid $50m for Ukraine to access Musk’s satellite internet service.

“The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers,” Sikorski wrote back on X. Ukrainian engineers are urgently exploring alternatives.

According to the FT, negotiations are taking place with four European satellite operators. Replacing Starlink terminals across a 1,000km frontline would take time, the paper noted.

Musk later said on Sunday said that no matter how much he disagreed on Ukraine policy, Starlink would never turn off its terminals. “We would never do such a thing or use it as a bargaining chip,” he wrote on X.

More than 20 people have been killed in the last two days by Russian bombs. On Friday, several ballistic missiles smashed into a five-storey residential block in the eastern Donetsk region, killing 11 civilians and injuring dozens, including three children.

Overnight, Ukraine carried out its own long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia. According to Telegram channels, oil refineries in Ryazan and Lipetsk were hit, together with an oil depot in Cheboksary in Russia’s Chuvashia Republic.

The depot is located more than 900km from the Ukrainian border and was targeted for the first time.