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Ukraine’s first days of fighting without US support have seen its troops forced to give up more of the Russian territory they seized last year in the Kursk region.
Russia intensified its offensive in Kursk over the weekend and is now threatening to cut off the narrow corridor between Ukraine and the town of Sudzha, which Kyiv captured in a surprise offensive last August.
The deterioration comes as Ukrainian soldiers face the prospect of fighting without US support ahead of crucial talks with the US in Saudi Arabia this week. “The situation in the Kursk region is very difficult and could turn into a disaster if we don’t act urgently to clear the logistical routes,” Ukrainian military blogger Bohdan Myroshnykov wrote late on Saturday.
Observers said Ukraine may have withdrawn from several villages near Sudzha, based on analysis of combat footage. Russia’s Defence Ministry also said on Sunday that its forces have captured Lebedevka, a village about 10 kilometres from the centre of the town, as well as the village of Konstyantynopil, in the southern part of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The capture of Lebedevka was confirmed by DeepState, a Ukrainian war tracking group closely tied to Ukraine’s defence minister.
Both Ukrainian and Russian military bloggers reported a raid conducted by Russian forces through a gas pipeline to bypass the Ukrainian lines in Kursk, though accounts differ on the result of the raid.
Ukrainian soldier Myroslav Hai claimed on Saturday that the raid was repelled, as Ukrainian paratroopers reportedly ambushed the Russian forces who exited from the tunnel.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said control of the Kursk region would be used as leverage in future negotiations with Moscow.
But the roads allowing Ukraine to supply its forces in the Kursk region are now under a constant barrage of kamikaze drones. Sudzha sits just 10km from the Ukrainian border on the R200 highway, which linked Russia and Ukraine before the war and is home to one of the main metering stations for Russian gas exports to the EU.
Assaults by Russian and North Korean forces have repeatedly shrunk the area held by Ukrainian forces by around two-thirds since last August.
On the battlefield, the dominance of drones as well as Russia’s reliance on small-scale assaults and infiltration tactics mean that the US decision to suspend the delivery of weapons following a disastrous White House meeting between Donald Trump and Zelenskyy may not be immediately felt by frontline troops.
“The war has changed so much,” said Denys Yaroslavskiy, the head of an intelligence unit in the 57th brigade, deployed in the border town of Vovchansk. “Nowadays we use FPV drones much more than the artillery our partners gave us, and APCs and tanks are rarely used, except sometimes by assault brigades”.
More worrying for Kyiv has been the shutdown of intelligence co-operation with the US as well as the prospect of losing access to Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband satellite network.
“I literally challenged Putin to one on one physical combat over Ukraine and my Starlink system is the backbone of the Ukrainian army. Their entire front line would collapse if I turned it off,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday morning. “What I am sickened by is years of slaughter in a stalemate that Ukraine will inevitably lose. Anyone who really cares, really thinks and really understands wants the meat grinder to stop. PEACE NOW!!”
A constant onslaught of strike drones has helped Ukraine halt Russian troops to a halt in other areas of the frontline.
Ukraine’s General Staff reported 24 clashes on the Pokrovsk front on Saturday, one of the lowest figures in that area of the frontline since the beginning of the year. Russian troops reached the outskirts of the industrial city of Pokrovsk in late August and have since attempted to bypass it from the South.
Despite the loss of Konstyantynopil over the weekend, Ukrainian forces have managed over recent weeks to launch counter-attacks and take back several villages, partially the result of deploying fresh drone units and better co-ordination.
“It’s not really a counteroffensive yet, but we’re moving to active defence, the line isn’t crumbling any more” said Ukrainian military blogger Oleksandr Karpyuk.
But months of a gruelling offensive that has seen Russian forces suffer heavy casualties also contributed to blunting the Russian assaults.
“Our guys have acted brilliantly, especially on the tactical level” one senior Ukrainian official said. “But it is a temporary stabilisation caused in good part by Russian exhaustion. They are going to regroup and attack again”.
Cartography by Steven Bernard in London
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