Putin orders army to eject last Ukrainian troops from Russian territory

By Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan

(Reuters) -President Vladimir Putin donned military fatigues for a surprise visit to troops in Russia's western Kursk region on Wednesday where he ordered them to press their lightning advance and swiftly retake the rest of the area from Ukrainian forces.

Putin made his visit after Washington asked him to consider a 30-day ceasefire proposal backed by Ukraine, and after Russian forces retook a swath of territory in Kursk, forcing Ukrainian troops to fall back and cede control of the town of Sudzha.

Ukraine sprang one of the biggest shocks of the war on August 6 last year by storming across the border and grabbing a chunk of land inside Russia, boosting citizens' morale and gaining a potential bargaining chip.

But after clinging for more than seven months to a gradually shrinking area, Ukraine has seen its position worsen sharply in Kursk in the past week after its main supply lines were severed.

Putin make it clear he was considering setting up a new buffer zone inside Ukraine's Sumy region, which is adjacent to Kursk, to guard against any future potential Ukrainian incursions.

He also said foreign citizens fighting with Ukrainian forces captured in Kursk were not entitled to enjoy the protection of the Geneva Conventions, and that Ukrainian soldiers captured in Kursk should be treated as "terrorists."

"Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible timeframe, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region and still fighting here, to completely liberate the territory of the Kursk region, and to restore the situation along the line of the state border," Putin said.

"And of course, we need to think about creating a security zone along the state border."

Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia's General Staff, was shown telling Putin that Russian forces had pushed Ukrainian forces out of over 86% of the territory they had once held in Kursk, the equivalent to 1,100 square kilometres (425 square miles) of land.

Ukraine's plans to use Kursk as a bargaining chip in possible future negotiations with Russia had failed, he added. Kyiv's gambit that its Kursk operation would force Russia to divert troops from its advance in eastern Ukraine had also not worked.

Gerasimov said Russian forces had retaken 24 settlements and 259 square kilometres of land from Ukrainian forces in the last five days along with over 400 prisoners.

Russian units had also crossed into Ukraine's Sumy region where he said they were expanding "a security zone."

Reuters could not independently verify his assertions.

Reuters was however able to verify video published by Russian bloggers and state media showing troops standing with a Russian tricolour flag on a square in the centre of Sudzha, a town near the Ukrainian border on a highway used by Ukraine as a supply route.

Deep State, an authoritative Ukrainian site that charts the frontlines of the war, updated its battlefield map to show Ukrainian forces were no longer in control of Sudzha. However, it said fighting was continuing on the outskirts.

Ukraine's top army commander said on Wednesday that Kyiv's troops will keep operating in Russia's Kursk region as long as needed and that fighting continued in and around the town of Sudzha.

Skadovskyi Defender, a Ukrainian military blogger, posted on Telegram: "Ukraine's Armed Forces are leaving Kursk. There will be no Ukrainian soldier there by Friday."

The same channel said, however, that Ukraine was continuing to conduct heavy strikes on Sudzha.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Antonov in Moscow, Anastasiia Malenko and Max Hunder in Kyiv, Yuliia Dysa in Gdansk and Lucy Papachristou in London, writing by Andrew Osborn/Mark Trevelyan; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Stephen Coates)