# Ukraine’s retreat from Kursk appears to mark end of audacious operation

## Under constant attack from drones attached to fibre optic cables, the soldiers scrambled in groups of two or three along hidden tracks or through fields, often walking miles to reach Ukrainian territory.

## The Ukrainian retreat from the Kursk region, carried out in stages over the past two weeks, appears to mark the end of one of the most audacious and surprising operations of the conflict, and strips Ukraine of one of its few solid bargaining chips in possible peace negotiations with Russia.

### Russian units and equipment were relocated to Kursk

For seven months, Ukraine held on to a chunk of Russian territory, including the town of Sudzha, which had a prewar population of about 5,000. It was the first time a foreign army had occupied Russian land since the second world war.

Russia, with the help of North Korean troops, has been pushing Ukrainian forces back, and in recent weeks the pressure on Ukrainian positions has become overwhelming. On Wednesday, Vladimir Putin donned military fatigues to visit a command post in the region, and on Thursday, Russia announced it had regained full control of Sudzha.

### Documents recovered from Russian army positions showed that Moscow’s military planners had warned of the threat of an incursion for months

Documents recovered from Russian army positions showed that Moscow’s military planners had warned of the threat of an incursion for months, but when it came Ukraine troops were able to overrun Russian positions, taking hundreds of prisoners of war.

### In Sudzha, officials and police fled without even destroying or taking away sensitive documents

A historian from Sumy recorded a podcast in Sudzha’s small history museum, explaining how Sudzha and the rest of the region was historically Ukrainian land, a nod to Russian claims about Ukrainian territories.

### At one point, there were plans to ask Russians who were fighting alongside Ukraine to enter the region and take over police functions

The idea would have been to troll Russia, which masked its 2014 intervention in Donbas as the work of Ukrainian separatists. However, the plans were quickly discarded as unworkable and incendiary.

### The capture of hundreds of prisoners allowed Ukraine to offer an exchange for captured Ukrainians held in Russian jails

The operation was also credited with providing a morale boost to Ukrainian troops and society after months of setbacks.

### The longer Ukrainian troops held on to the land, the more it became clear that the endgame of the operation was now the chance to use Kursk as a card at future negotiations

Zelenskyy told the Guardian last month that Kyiv would “swap one territory for another”.

However, as time went on, Russia upped the pressure on Ukrainian positions in the region. By the beginning of this year, Ukrainian military planners could see Russia making a sustained effort to concentrate forces on Kursk.

### Some of Russia’s best drone units were relocated to the Kursk theatre

Because Ukrainian forces can use radio jammers to block Russian FPV (first person view) drones, Russia has increasingly begun using fibre optic drones, which unspool a thin cable over several miles and are immune to jammers.

“After seven months, we simply withdrew. There was no encirclement,” one military source said in early February. “There were political goals, military goals, there was getting the Russians to move troops from Pokrovsk  to Kursk. And we showed how shameful it is for the Russians, that they can’t fight Ukraine without North Koreans.”

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