Ukrainian troops in Kursk have lost ground in recent days but are not surrounded by Russian forces despite recent claims made by US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to Reuters citing three US and European officials, intelligence reports confirm that Ukrainian troops are facing heavy pressure, they are not encircled, the officials said.
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US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, have shared their assessment with the White House over the past week, a US official and another source familiar with the matter told Reuters. However, Trump has continued to assert that Ukrainian forces are “completely surrounded” in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast.
Trump, who has pledged to broker a swift end to the war, claimed in a social media post on March 14 that he had urged Putin to spare the lives of “thousands” of trapped Ukrainian soldiers.
During a speech at Washington’s Kennedy Center on Monday and a Fox News interview on Tuesday, Trump repeated his claim that Ukrainian troops were cut off.
The US National Security Council declined to comment directly on the intelligence reports but referred Reuters to a joint statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. The statement highlighted Trump’s recent call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and their agreement to continue sharing intelligence on Kursk.
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Zelensky has denied that Ukrainian forces are surrounded and accused Putin of fabricating battlefield realities to strengthen his negotiating position.
Since August, when Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia’s Kursk region, Kyiv has gradually lost most of the territory it initially seized. Open-source intelligence suggests that of the nearly 500 square miles Ukrainian troops once controlled, they now hold only 20 to 30 square miles.
While Russian forces are making incremental gains, the officials who spoke to Reuters, along with independent analysts, dismissed Putin’s March 13 claim that Ukraine’s troops were “cut off” and had no choice but to “surrender or die.”
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based conflict monitor, stated on March 14 that it had “observed no geolocated evidence to indicate that Russian forces have encircled a significant number of Ukrainian forces in Kursk Oblast or elsewhere along the front line in Ukraine.”
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