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The Kremlin has claimed that all Ukrainian troops have been pushed out of Russia’s Kursk region and for the first time confirmed the role of North Korean soldiers in the fighting. 

Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov reported on Saturday to President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine’s forces inside Kursk had been repelled, nine months after their surprise incursion – which was the first by a foreign army into Russian territory since the Second World War. Gerasimov claimed Ukraine had suffered “huge losses”.

“The Kyiv regime’s adventure has completely failed,” Putin said in a carefully orchestrated video meeting that aired on state television.

Ukraine contradicted Russia’s version of events; a senior official told the Financial Times that Putin’s claim was “bullshit”. The official insisted that Kyiv’s forces still hold ground in the Kursk region, although the amount of territory it controls has fallen to about 30 sq km from the roughly 1,300 sq km it captured in August.

The Kremlin’s claim came as US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met briefly at the Vatican before the funeral of Pope Francis. It was the first time they had seen each other in person since their explosive meeting in the Oval Office in February.

Trump said that Russia and Ukraine were “very close” to agreeing a deal after his special envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in Moscow on Friday for a fourth round of talks.

But on Saturday in a post on Truth Social after meeting Zelenskyy, the US president questioned Putin’s willingness to end the war. “There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns over the last few days,” he wrote.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions?” Too many people are dying!!!”

Putin struck a defiant note on Saturday. “The complete defeat of the enemy in the Kursk border area creates conditions for further successful actions by our troops in other important areas of the front,” he told Gerasimov.

Gerasimov praised the North Korean troops for their bravery, saying they fought “shoulder to shoulder” with their Russian comrades. More than 12,000 North Korean troops were deployed to the region, according to the Ukrainian, South Korean and American governments. Moscow had not previously officially acknowledged their presence.

Ukraine’s General Staff said Russia’s claims “do not correspond to reality”, calling them “a propaganda ploy” and “wishful thinking”.

It said its “defensive operation . . . in certain areas in the Kursk region continues”. “The operational situation is difficult, but our units continue to hold certain positions and carry out assigned tasks, while inflicting effective fire damage on the enemy from all types of weapons, including active defence tactics.”

It said that five enemy assaults had been repelled and that another battle was under way, adding that there was no threat of encirclement of its units, which also remain present in Russia’s neighbouring Belgorod region. That operation is small in comparison to Kursk, however; Zelenskyy has said the goal is to create a “buffer zone” to prevent future Russian assaults from the region.

Ukraine shocked Russia last August when its forces stormed across the border into Kursk, seizing on the element of surprise to bring the war home to Russia, take hundreds of prisoners of war and a chunk of land, including the town of Sudzha.

The army was willing to take the risk in a bid to seize the momentum on the battlefield. While it boosted morale and led to the release of hundreds of Ukrainian prisoners of war, Zelenskyy’s goal of holding on to the territory as a bargaining chip has floundered.

On Saturday Russian officials gave North Korea much of the credit for its role in pushing back Ukraine’s forces, with Gerasimov praising its troops for their “heroism” in battle.

The North Korean soldiers found success in assaulting the Ukrainian frontline in small groups backed by artillery and air support. They quickly became known for their determination and allegiance to their leader, Kim Jong Un. Ukraine captured two, who remain imprisoned in Kyiv.

Pyongyang had also provided Moscow with more than 200 domestically-produced 170mm M1989 self-propelled howitzers and updated 240mm multiple launch rocket systems for the fight in Kursk region, according to Ukrainian intelligence shared with the FT.

“We will never forget our friends,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on social media in praise of Pyongyang’s contribution to the war.

Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s special envoy and lead negotiator tasked with ending the war in Ukraine, has attracted criticism in Europe and Ukraine after an interview where he appeared to back a number of well-known Kremlin talking points on the conflict.

The comments, in which Witkoff seemed to accept the results of sham referenda Russia has previously held in Ukraine to justify its seizure of land there — including Crimea, will likely feed fears among European allies that the Trump administration is leaning too far toward the Kremlin’s vision.

In the interview for “The Tucker Carlson Show,” posted online on Friday, Witkoff talked about his efforts to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin, speaking warmly of the Russian leader. Witkoff said he believed the heart of the conflict was Russia’s desire to control four regions of Ukraine it partially occupied and has claimed annexed since 2022: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Talking about Putin’s claims to the regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, Witkoff suggested Russia had a right to them because they were majority Russian-speaking and repeated a false Kremlin claim that fair referenda there showed residents wanted to be absorbed by Russia.

“They are Russian-speaking, and there have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” Witkoff told Carlson.

However, Witkoff did not acknowledge that the supposed referenda held in those territories — whether in 2014 in the case of Crimea or 2022 in the other regions — were widely dismissed by Western powers, human rights organizations and international bodies as fraudulent and illegitimate.

Russia conducted referenda in the areas it occupied in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the fall of 2022, several months after seizing them with its full-scale invasion launched in February that year. Putin used the referenda to justify Russia’s subsequent annexation of the regions. Russia also held a similar referendum in Crimea in 2014 following its occupation of the Ukrainian peninsula.

The referenda were staged after Russia’s invasion had already forced hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to flee, and while Russian security forces were abducting and torturing anyone expressing opposition to its takeover. In some areas, Russian soldiers were filmed accompanying vote collectors as they went from house to house.

No legitimate independent international observers monitored the referenda and they were widely dismissed as shams, including by the United States. The United Nations General Assembly rejected the referenda as illegal and violating the U.N. Charter.

In September 2022, then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. “does not, and will never, recognize any of the Kremlin’s claims to sovereignty over parts of Ukraine that it’s seized by force and now purports to incorporate into Russia.”

Witkoff made the remarks on the Russian referenda a day before a new round of talks between the U.S. and Russia in Saudi Arabia aimed at trying to make progress toward ending the war. His portrayal of the referenda as legitimate triggered some fierce criticism in Europe.

“Witkoff’s repeating of Kremlin lies about ‘russian-speakers’ [sic] wanting to ‘join Russia’ is truly chilling,” Lithuania’s former foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, wrote on X. “Hearing Americans talk like this should be an electric shock for Europe, not a wakeup call.”

Some Ukrainian members of parliament also condemned Witkoff’s comments. 

Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that the statements were “shocking.”

“I don’t understand what this is about — ignorance, naivety, unprofessionalism?” said Merezhko, who suggested Witkoff should be removed from his negotiating role. “Because we are talking about a representative of the president, who should professionally understand this issue and know some basic things. And he doesn’t know this. He is relaying Russian propaganda.”

In the interview with Carlson, Witkoff appeared to struggle to remember the names of the Ukrainian regions. “Donbas, Crimea. You know the names,” he told the conservative media personality, who prompted him to say “Lugansk” — the Russian transliteration for Luhansk. “Lugansk, and there’s two others,” Witkoff replied.

Although Putin declared he had annexed the four regions, his troops still do not fully control most of the area. Much of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, including their regional capitals, remain unoccupied.

A wealthy real estate developer, Witkoff has emerged as the lead negotiator for Trump’s effort to end the war, twice now traveling to Moscow, where he has said he spent several hours talking with Putin.

In his interview on Carlson, Witkoff was effusive in his praise for Putin, calling him a “very smart guy” and noting Putin told him he had prayed for Trump after the assassination attempt against him during last year’s presidential campaign. Witkoff added that Putin had given him a portrait of Trump which he says the Russian leader had commissioned from a famous Russian artist.

“This is the kind of connection that we’ve been able to reestablish through a simple word called communication, which many people would say I shouldn’t have had because Putin is a bad guy. I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” Witkoff said.

Witkoff also told Carlson he believed Russia “does not need to absorb Ukraine,” saying, “They’ve gotten what they want. So why do they need more?” He also said he “100%” believes Russia does not want to invade Europe, saying he took Putin “at his word” on that. 

Witkoff also repeated an unsupported claim made by Putin that Russian forces have surrounded a significant number of Ukrainian troops in Russia’s Kursk region. Although Ukraine was forced to retreat from Kursk earlier this month, no evidence has emerged to suggest many Ukrainian soldiers are encircled, and both independent researchers and Ukrainian officials have said it is false.

“Witkoff uncritically amplified a number of Russian demands, claims and justifications,” the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote.

Witkoff’s comments could feed deep unease in Europe that the Trump administration, which is moving fast to restore relations with Russia, is more aligned with the Kremlin than NATO allies over the war in Ukraine. European officials and observers have also warned the administration, in its hurry to reach a deal, is vulnerable to manipulation by Putin.

The White House has argued its reengagement with Russia brings peace closer, but critics point out that the Kremlin has, so far, yet to make any significant concessions. Trump has claimed he isn’t “aligned” with Putin. “I’m not aligned with Putin. I’m not aligned with anybody. I’m aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world,” Trump said last month.

Vice President JD Vance on Monday defended Witkoff, writing on X he was doing an “incredible job.”

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The Kremlin has said western unity over Ukraine is falling apart after an extraordinary spat in the White House between the US and Ukraine threatened to derail support for Kyiv against Russia’s invasion.

Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said the spat between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy showed Ukraine’s leader “doesn’t want peace, he wants the war to continue”, according to Interfax.

“The collective west has partially ceased to be collective, and the fragmentation of the collective west has begun,” Peskov told reporters, referring to European countries scrambling to find ways to support Ukraine after the Oval Office argument last Friday.

Peskov said another country would have to convince the US to smooth over the fallout from the spat and “make Zelenskyy himself change his position”.

This is a developing story

Before leaving office in January, President Biden can still do much to bolster Ukraine’s security, and our own. The need for greater U.S. aid is obvious from reports from the war zone.

Last month, Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine crossed the 1,000-day mark. And just as it has since the first day of its invasion, the Russian military this past week relentlessly bombed not only Ukrainian army positions along the 600-mile front, but also houses, clinics, schools, power plants and factories all across Ukraine. You’ve seen footage of the utter destruction in Gaza from bombing campaigns: Imagine that on a scale of Texas, and you’ll have a sense of Ukrainians’ daily life. The attacks keep coming. In just one night last week, Russia launched a barrage of 188 missiles and drones aimed at 17 regions of Ukraine.

The Kremlin also keeps waging disinformation. It has grossly misrepresented that overnight blitz as a “response” to new Western aid and made overblown claims about Russia’s experimental ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, that hit Ukraine’s major industrial city of Dnipro a few days earlier.

And Ukraine is reporting a spike in the number of prisoners of war being murdered by Russians — dozens of cases alleged in recent months, including 16 said to have been shot immediately after they surrendered.

Despite being often outmanned and outgunned, Ukrainian forces, with support from the U.S. and Europe, repelled most of the infantry assaults this past week — 150 to 220 skirmishes each day. While ceding some territory here and there, they inflicted punishing losses on Russia.

The Ukrainian people are unbowed. Defying destruction and trauma, they continue to cherish and defend what Russia threatens to take away: About 85% of 418 respondents in my tracking poll in October with Ukraine’s Academy of Sciences Institute of Sociology said democracy and free speech are important to them. More than 80% said Ukraine will win the war. Around 90% said they will not compromise on Ukraine’s independence.

But change and uncertainty are in the air. In November, Russia gained territory in Ukraine faster than at any time since the early months of its full-scale invasion. Ukraine failed to get enough support from its allies to counter Russia’s devastating guided glide bombs.

In contrast, Russia got unprecedented assistance from North Korea, with an estimated 5 million artillery shells, 100 ballistic missiles and 11,000 troops sent into battle to counter Ukraine’s diversionary advance into Russia’s Kursk province. And the Kremlin is reaching out for more elsewhere, including to Houthis in Yemen and to the Taliban, with Moscow now set to remove that group from its list of terrorists. Russia’s economy is on a war footing and has grown more than twice as fast as the euro area over the last year despite Western sanctions.

In other words, Ukraine needs much more help to protect its sovereignty and hold the line against Russian expansionism.

Biden’s recent authorization for U.S.-supplied missiles to be used against targets in Russia has already enabled Ukraine to seriously damage an air base, an army base, a command hub, a powerful anti-aircraft complex, and a major refinery and fuel depot that were sustaining Russia’s offensive. The first approved deliveries of U.S. antipersonnel land mines will help the beleaguered Ukrainian forces retain control of vital strongholds.

The next priority for the U.S. in the remainder of Biden’s term is to get the biggest bang possible out of the $6 billion that’s congressionally authorized to support Ukraine.

If the U.S. would supply Ukraine with about half of the 500 newly manufactured missiles in the American arsenal, Kyiv could deliver deadly blows to most of 200 military facilities within range that directly uphold the Russian offensive. (So far, the U.S. has given Ukraine just 50 of these long-range missiles, known as the Army Tactical Missile Systems.)

With three additional air defense systems, known as Patriot batteries, Ukraine can close vulnerabilities in its air defenses and even resume effectively targeting Russia’s glide-bomb-carrying aircraft.

If the U.S. would supply Ukraine with just one of the Terminal High-Altitude Air Defense batteries that we keep in reserve for contingency operations — the same technology being sent to Israel to counter Iranian missiles — Kyiv could take the sting out of Moscow’s longer-range ballistic missile threats.

Such strong actions taken in the next two months would also help the incoming Trump administration safeguard America’s strategic interests for years to come. Already, the president-elect has appointed Keith Kellogg, a retired Army general, to bring the Russia-Ukraine war to an end.

Kellogg’s plan is to use threats and inducements to get both sides to agree to a cease-fire along the current front lines. A hardened soldier and clear-eyed realist with a lifetime experience of great-power conflicts, the general is likely to learn quickly that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not settle for controlling one-fifth of Ukraine; the Kremlin wants to get Ukraine and the West to capitulate. That would make Donald Trump look weak. After a new administration has been so publicly defeated, any deal with any nation on any issue will become much costlier and harder to achieve in the remainder of Trump’s four years.

To avoid this fiasco, Trump and his team will have to work out bolder and more effective ways to support Ukraine until Moscow has no choice but to accept a negotiated settlement with Ukraine’s security guarantees. Even if Trump’s priority is to end the war quickly, it would be dangerous to do that by pressuring Ukraine through diminished aid; the only hope for a lasting peace that preserves U.S. standing would come through pressuring Russia.

Biden has a key role to play at this crucial juncture. The more boldly he can back Kyiv while still in office, the greater Ukraine’s chances of surviving as a free nation and the greater America’s chances of remaining the reigning superpower.

Mikhail Alexseev, a professor of international relations at San Diego State University, is the author of “Without Warning: Threat Assessment, Intelligence, and Global Struggle” and principal investigator of the War, Democracy and Society project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Following the full-scale invasion by Russia in February 2022, Ukraine has suffered tremendously. Tens of thousands have died, and a quarter of the country’s prewar population has been displaced. Homes, neighborhoods and entire cities have been reduced to rubble.

Some question the wisdom of Ukraine continuing to fight back instead of seeking to negotiate with Russia. President Vladimir Putin himself claims he “does not reject the idea of peace talks,” while prominent figures have called for negotiations, possibly involving a settlement to cede occupied territories in exchange for peace.

Calls for Ukraine to have such talks rely on an assumption that Russia would negotiate in good faith. But, looking to history as a guide, this assumption is naïve. Russia’s actions over the last 31 years reveal a troubling pattern of frequent lying and breaking international agreements. Negotiations with Russia are therefore futile.

Russia agreed to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and to refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine in both the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the Russian-Ukrainian Friendship Treaty of 1997. In an agreement partitioning the Black Sea Fleet after the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia agreed to pay Ukraine to lease a naval base in Sevastopol.

Seventeen years later, it illegally annexed that base and the rest of Crimea. In the Budapest Memorandum, Russia provided security assurances to Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear arsenal. Now, a nuclear power has launched a full-scale invasion of the state whose security it was supposed to protect.

Russia’s other neighbors have had similar experiences. Russia armed and fought on the side of separatists in both Georgia and Moldova.

In 1992, Russia signed two agreements ensuring the territorial integrity of Georgia and promising to avoid military involvement in its separatist conflicts. Yet in 2008, Russia invaded, falsely claiming that Georgia was committing genocide against South Ossetians to justify the war. In a cease-fire agreement brokered by the French president, Russia agreed to withdraw its troops from Georgia — but it never did. Fifteen years later, Russian troops continue to occupy 20% of Georgian territory.

Similarly, some 1,500 Russian soldiers are stationed in the Moldovan region of Transnistria, more than 20 years after Russia made two agreements to withdraw them.

Russia has an abysmal track record of keeping agreements made with the countries it has invaded, including ones brokered by outside mediators and security organizations.

Perhaps Russia would be more likely to respect a treaty brokered by a powerful country such as the United States? Unfortunately, history provides no evidence for this assumption, either. Russia has broken every nuclear treaty it has signed with the U.S.

Under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty signed at the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and Russia agreed to ban missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,000 kilometers. Within the last decade, Russia secretly tested a cruise missile with a range of 2,500 kilometers and now deploys it in four battalions.

This year, Russia suspended its participation in the New START treaty. Moscow had already been refusing to restart mandatory inspections of its arsenal after a pause early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Even in its dealings with the U.S., Russia readily violates treaties and abandons them when convenient.

Russia has also shown a pattern of disregard for states throughout Europe and the Americas. Its interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, when Russia hacked into the computer servers of the Democratic National Convention and targeted voter systems in all 50 states, was broadly publicized in the media. Additionally, the Kremlin has illegally meddled in the elections of countries including Belarus, France, Georgia, Germany, Malta, Moldova, the Netherlands, Poland and Ukraine.

Russia has also conducted less subtle attempts at interference in foreign politics. The Kremlin attempted a coup in Montenegro a year before the country ratified its accession to NATO. Western intelligence concluded that a special unit of the Russian GRU planned to attack the Montenegrin parliament and assassinate the prime minister on the day of the parliamentary elections. This year, there have been allegations that Russia planned a similar coup in Moldova.

Russia’s readiness to ignore the sovereignty of other nations is also exemplified by its audacious assassinations of political opponents in broad daylight across Europe. In 2006, former British double agent Alexander Litvinenko died from radiation sickness in London after drinking a cup of tea poisoned with polonium-210. British investigators concluded the assassination, carried out by Russian FSB agents, was probably ordered by Putin.

In 2018, Russian intelligence poisoned another former spy, Sergei Skripal, in a park in Salisbury. He survived the attempt, but a British woman died after accidentally coming into contact with the poison. The following year, a Chechen insurgent fighter named Zelimkhan Khangoshvili was shot and killed by an FSB agent in the middle of a park in Berlin.

What is notable about these violent acts and attempts at election interference is that besides trampling on other states’ sovereignty, Russia consistently lies. According to Putin: “We didn’t meddle, we aren’t meddling, and we will not meddle in any elections.”

The Kremlin also mocked British investigations into the poisonings of Litvinenko and Skripal as “totally absurd.” Russia’s modus operandi has always been “deny everything and admit nothing.”

Those who argue that it is time for Ukraine to negotiate with Russia are overlooking reality. Russia has broken every peace treaty it ever signed with Ukraine, and many more with other states it has inflicted violence upon.

The Kremlin operates without regard for its neighbors, the United States, European countries, or any moral or legal boundaries. Putin has no reservations about interfering in democratic elections, plotting coups or murdering people even on NATO soil.

Negotiations hinge on having a modicum of trust in the other party’s commitment to honor agreements, but Russia has demolished any grounds for trust.

Anastassia Fedyk is an assistant professor of finance at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Tatyana Deryugina is an associate professor of finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Emilia Marshall, a research fellow with Economists for Ukraine, contributed to this article.