KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday Ukraine\u2019s army was still fighting in Russia\u2019s Kursk despite Moscow claiming the \u201cliberation\u201d of its western region, as Washington signalled a \u201ccritical week\u201d ahead for negotiations.
\nKyiv had hoped it could use land in the Kursk region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Russia, which has seized parts of eastern and southern Ukraine since launching its offensive in February 2022.
\n\u201cOur military continues to perform tasks in the Kursk and Belgorod regions \u2014 we are maintaining our presence on Russian territory,\u201d he said in his evening address Sunday.
\nIn a statement earlier Sunday, he conceded that the situation remained difficult in many areas including Kursk.
\nRussia said on Saturday it had captured Gornal, the last settlement under Ukrainian control in its border Kursk region, where Kyiv launched a shock offensive in August 2024.
\nYet hours later Ukraine\u2019s army dismissed Russia\u2019s claim as \u201cpropaganda tricks.\u201d
\nSeveral Russian military bloggers who closely monitor the conflict also said fighting was still ongoing around the forests on the border between Russia and Ukraine.
\nAnd a local Russian army commander in Kursk said the army was still conducting operations in the region, according to a state TV broadcast aired on Sunday.
\n\u201cThe situation on the front lines and the actual activities of the Russian army prove that the current pressure on Russia to end this war is not enough,\u201d Zelensky said Sunday.
\nHe called for increased pressure on Russia to create more opportunities for \u201creal diplomacy.\u201d
\nOn Saturday, Zelensky discussed a potential ceasefire with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of Pope Francis\u2019s funeral at the Vatican.
\nAfter their brief talk in St. Peter\u2019s Basilica, Trump cast doubt over whether Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted an end to the war, which has devastated swathes of eastern Ukraine and killed tens of thousands of people.
\nThe following night, Russia launched drone and missile attacks, killing four people in regions across eastern Ukraine and wounding more than a dozen.
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio stressed the importance of the coming week.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re close, but we\u2019re not close enough\u201d to a deal to halt the fighting, Rubio told broadcaster NBC on Sunday. \u201cI think this is going to be a very critical week.\u201d
\nGermany\u2019s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Sunday Ukraine should not agree to all territorial concessions to Russia reportedly set out in the deal proposed by Trump.
\n\u201cUkraine has, of course, known for some time that a sustainable, credible ceasefire or peace agreement may involve territorial concessions,\u201d he told broadcaster ARD.
\n\u201cBut these will certainly not go… as far as they do in the latest proposal from the US president,\u201d Pistorius said.
\nWashington has not revealed details of its peace plan, but has suggested freezing the front line and accepting Russian control of Crimea in exchange for peace.
\nWhen he claimed that Russia had recaptured all of Kursk from Ukraine, Chief of Staff Valery Gerasimov praised the \u201cheroism\u201d of the North Korean soldiers who fought for Russia in the campaign.
\nIt was the first time Moscow had admitted their participation in the conflict.
\nIn August 2024, the Ukrainian army entered Kursk in an unprecedented counter-offensive on Russian soil. Among other gains, they seized a pumping station through which Russian gas used to flow to Europe.
\nSince then, Moscow has forced Kyiv\u2019s soldiers onto the defensive, gradually recapturing much of the region.
\nAfter Ukraine was temporarily deprived of key US intelligence in March 2025, Russia redoubled its efforts, including through a surprise covert operation using an underground gas pipeline, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
\nRussia has said that after Kursk\u2019s recapture it will keep advancing in the four Ukrainian regions it claimed to have annexed in 2022.
\nMoscow was also planning to create a \u201cbuffer zone\u201d in Ukraine\u2019s Sumy region, which borders Russia, said Gerasimov.
\nRussia holds about 20 percent of Ukraine\u2019s territory, including the Crimean peninsula which Moscow annexed in 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KYIV, Ukraine: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday Ukraine\u2019s army was still fighting in Russia\u2019s Kursk despite Moscow claiming the \u201cliberation\u201d of its western region, as Washington signalled a \u201ccritical week\u201d ahead for negotiations. Kyiv had hoped it could use land in the Kursk region as a bargaining chip in future peace talks with Russia, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":80263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80245"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":80264,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80245\/revisions\/80264"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}