On Saturday, Russia announced that it had regained two villages in the Kursk province, bordering Ukraine, as part of ongoing efforts to regain lost ground. Moscow ratcheted up the stakes this week in a campaign to recapture territory previously lost to Ukraine in the western part of the Kursk province.
The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina, to the north and west of Sudzha, the main town Moscow recaptured earlier this week, were taken.
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="1080px" width="1920px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
![](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,<svg height="168px" width="300px" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" version="1.1"/>)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday appealed to Ukrainian soldiers in Kursk, calling for them to “surrender” and vowing them safety of life and “dignified treatment” if they dropped their arms. “If they drop their weapons and surrender, they will be assured of a life and of dignified treatment,” Putin declared.
In reply, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recognized the difficult situation in Kursk as “obviously very difficult.” The Ukrainian army on Saturday posted a map on social media indicating that its forces had pulled back westward in direction of the border.
