Russia Presses Offensive in Kursk Amid Cease-Fire Talks With U.S.

Moscow is pressing its offensive to retake the full territory of Russia’s Kursk region from Ukraine as negotiations between the White House and the Kremlin continue over a possible cease-fire in the three-year war.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Saturday that its forces had retaken two villages outside Sudzha, the main Russian town that Ukraine occupied since its surprise offensive into Russia last summer but appears to have lost in recent days. Ukrainian officials did not immediately comment on Russia’s newest claim and have not confirmed a retreat by its forces from Sudzha.

Moscow’s advances on the Kursk front came a day after President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia called on Ukrainian forces still fighting in the region to lay down their arms. Mr. Putin said he would spare their lives if they surrendered.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated Mr. Putin’s demand in comments to the state news agency Tass on Saturday.

“It’s still valid,” Mr. Peskov said, although he added that “time was running out.”

The Russian leader has said that Ukrainian forces are encircled in the region, an assertion that President Trump repeated in a message on Truth Social.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine denied that the Ukrainian troops were surrounded.

“Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region,” Mr. Zelensky said in a post Saturday on Facebook, referring to North Korean fighters who have been assisting Russia in Kursk. “There is no encirclement of our troops.”

Mr. Zelensky said Russia was not only pressing an offensive in the Kursk region, but also planning a new assault on the neighboring Sumy region of Ukraine.

“We are aware of this and will counter it,” Mr. Zelensky said. “I would like all partners to understand exactly what Putin is planning, what he is preparing for and what he will be ignoring.”

Mr. Putin said last year that Russia would not hold any negotiations with Ukraine so long as Ukrainian troops were still in Russia’s Kursk region. He has also talked about a need for “buffer zones” in Ukraine’s border regions to prevent attacks on Russian soil.

On Thursday, he appeared in no hurry to accept the offer of a 30-day truce made by Ukraine and the United States — telling a news conference that he was open to the proposal but that he would seek to negotiate over issues like Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

As the battlefield in Kursk shifted, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain was convening a virtual summit on Saturday of global leaders committed to aiding Ukraine. “We can’t allow President Putin to play games with President Trump’s deal,” Mr. Starmer said in a statement as he prepared to host the meeting.

“The Kremlin’s complete disregard for President Trump’s cease-fire proposal only serves to demonstrate that Putin is not serious about peace,” the British leader said.

While Ukraine reeled from a temporary cutoff of U.S. military aid and intelligence assistance last week, Moscow stepped up its efforts to retake Kursk. In recent days, Russian forces have been escalating attacks in the area and in the Sumy region.

The Russian attacks there have included attempts to enter Ukrainian territory using small sabotage groups and increased shelling of the border and the regional capital, the city of Sumy, according to Ukrainian officials. A total of 161 explosions were reported in the Ukrainian region over the last night, officials said.

Shahed drones also targeted critical infrastructure in Sumy, leading to power outages and disruptions to the water supply, they said.

The operations in Kursk and Sumy come as part of a broader jump in attacks.

Overnight, Russia launched two Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 178 drones at Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainian authorities said. The missiles struck a residential district in Kryvyi Rih, Mr. Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine, injuring 14 people, including two children, according to the local authorities

Small assault groups from Russia entered the northern border region of Ukraine on Friday but were pushed out, Andriy Demchenko, the spokesman for the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, said in a phone interview.

“Their task is to break through and wedge their way in, but so far they haven’t succeeded,” Mr. Demchenko said.

He said that Russian forces had tried to use armored vehicles and three all-terrain vehicles to break through the border but had been unsuccessful. In their latest attempt, soldiers tried to enter Ukrainian territory on foot in small groups of up to five soldiers, he said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry also said that Russian engineering forces had begun demining areas that its forces had retaken in the Kursk region near the border with Ukraine.