KYIV - The fight to control some 200 square miles of land in western Russia became even more brutal in recent days as the Kremlin, ahead of possible negotiations with the incoming Trump administration to end the war, appears set on removing Russian territory from the equation.

Ukraine has controlled swaths of Russia’s Kursk region since a surprise cross-border incursion in August and - despite having lost around half its initial gains - still maintains a foothold there.

Russia launched a new counteroffensive last week, Ukrainian troops and military analysts said, flooding the front line with waves of soldiers. It has also deployed at least 10,000 North Koreans to the region, according to U.S. intelligence estimates. The new assault has been messy but relentless and began after Donald Trump - who has pledged to quickly end the war - was elected U.S. president.

The timing appears to demonstrate the Kremlin’s growing appreciation for how Kursk may play into future talks: If negotiations are to occur, Russia wants to make sure only Ukrainian land is up for debate.

“It is clear that Moscow will not start any negotiations until they have kicked out every last Ukrainian soldier from Kursk,” Konstantin Remchukov, the editor in chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta who moves in Kremlin circles, told The Washington Post.

Russian President Vladimir Putin does not want Kursk to be used as a bargaining chip - nor does he want to be forced to relinquish any of the Ukrainian territory he has captured since Russia’s invasion, Remchukov added. Putin’s recent mentions that any deal needs to reflect the “realities on the ground” refers to Russia’s hopes to recapture Kursk, he said.

In the last week, the Kremlin has dramatically upped its maximalist rhetoric on peace negotiations, implying that it will not be any more willing to make concessions to an incoming Trump administration than it was to President Joe Biden.

In an interview with Russian state TV on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appeared to preemptively reject any proposals to freeze the conflict and the current front lines - as have been proposed by people around Trump - calling the suggestion “even worse” than the Minsk Agreements that followed the war in eastern Ukraine in 2014.

Russian military blogger and propagandist Mikhail Zvinchuk, who founded the Telegram channel Rybar, said that Trump might try to pressure Moscow with Ukraine’s occupation of Kursk but that he expects it will be retaken in the coming weeks or months.

“I believe that in any case the Kursk issue will be resolved before Trump’s inauguration,” he said, describing the recent Russian assault as the third wave of a sustained counteroffensive that he claims knocked out Ukraine’s reserves and logistics in the bordering Sumy region in Ukraine and enabled the Russian recapture of several settlements.

Ukrainian forces seized between 386 and 579 square miles in the first two weeks of the Kursk operation in August, said Pasi Paroinen, an analyst with Black Bird Group, an open-source intelligence analysis collective based in Helsinki. Russia has steadily counterattacked ever since, and with an assault now underway from three directions, he predicted that Ukrainian-held ground would shrink farther in the coming days.

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Not smooth sailing

But the latest assault has not been smooth sailing for the Russians, according to Ukrainian troops. After more than a week of relentless fighting, they say, Russia has made only small gains and lost significant numbers of troops and equipment along the way.

Despite increased pressure, the Ukrainians say, they are largely holding the line.

Oleksandr, 39, who works on intelligence in the Kursk region for the 82nd Brigade, said Ukrainian troops had destroyed more than 50 Russian vehicles, including APCs and tanks, in recent days. Russian soldiers kept repeating their mistakes, he said, such as moving on roads controlled by Ukrainian firepower, missing turns and even shooting at their own infantry positions.

Amid constant reports of Russians treating captive Ukrainians in a brutal fashion, he himself witnessed the killing of soldiers taken prisoner in real time via drone footage. He spoke on the condition that he be identified only by his first name due to military rules.

On Monday, Oleksandr saw Russian soldiers take a Ukrainian position, capturing two soldiers and then shooting them dead, in footage later verified by The Washington Post.

In retaliation, Oleksandr said, the Ukrainian command post launched a flurry of drones at the Russians to try to kill the Russian troops and destroy their vehicle.

For those few minutes, “the Russians who executed our prisoners were our most priority target,” Oleksandr said, adding that Ukraine later retook the position. “But you don’t have enough time to think about this a lot because you have a job to be done; you have other Russians to be killed.”

Artem Efanov, a drone operator in the 82nd Brigade who spoke by video chat from a dugout between missions in Kursk, said that he had seen Russian troops getting stuck in swamps, bogs and rivers, with muddy terrain making it hard for them to successfully advance.

“We are holding the lines,” Efanov said. “It has become more difficult, but we have the means.”

Recent rare protests from displaced residents of Kursk have demonstrated that Ukraine’s incursion has caused significant internal problems for Russia, said Efanov. The latest Russian assault probably has less to do with Trump, he said, and more to do with Putin’s “political ambition to say ‘we can handle it, we can free the Kursk region in three days,’ just like they planned to occupy Kyiv in three days.”

Photos and videos from more than half a dozen villages north and south of Sudzha verified by The Post in the past week show that Russian vehicles faced fierce opposition from Ukrainians as they tried to advance farther into Kursk. In one drone video recorded Wednesday, a Russian MT-LB, a type of armored vehicle, is hit as it drives south past the village of Novoivanovka. Soldiers roll out of the carrier engulfed in flames as the vehicle keeps advancing toward an intersection before being struck again. Two more soldiers abandon the blazing vehicle, running to take cover in the woods.

Other footage shows the aftermath of battles and attacks on small convoys of Russian armored vehicles. “The Russians are increasing the tempo of their operations and increasing the size and scale of their armored attacks in a likely attempt to overwhelm Ukrainian defenders and expel Ukrainian troops from Kursk,” said George Barros, a geospatial and Russian analyst at the Institute for the Study of War.

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Putin’s winning streak

Kyiv, while publicly rejecting suggestions to exchange land for peace, is also eyeing the incoming Trump presidency and wants to keep Kursk on the table as much as Russia wants to push it off.

There are growing doubts, though, over why Putin, whose forces are advancing on all fronts, would even consider negotiations that could get in the way of his original goal of seizing control of all of Ukraine.

“Putin probably believes he’s on a winning streak and why should he negotiate now, so his demands are likely to be extremely high,” said Camille Grand, a former NATO assistant secretary general who is now a distinguished policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

It remains to be seen whether Putin’s declarations of maximalist demands are a negotiating tactic or “whether he means it because he has put so much skin in this war that ending on a compromise is not going to be acceptable for him,” he said.

In any moves toward negotiations, much will depend on “whether Putin wants to take his chips and accept more or less Trump’s proposals or whether his conclusion is that Trump is going to dump Ukraine, so let’s go on,” said Gerard Araud, a former French ambassador to Washington.

Rob Lee, a senior fellow with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Ukraine probably sees Kursk as potential future leverage in negotiations but the downside is that the operation has significantly taxed its military.

Ukrainian losses in the eastern Donetsk region accelerated in mid-August to mid-September, analysts said, as experienced units left their positions and focused on the Kursk operation.

Russian forces inside Ukraine have advanced faster over the past three months than at any point since 2022, Lee said. With winter looming, foliage is already dwindling, making camouflage more difficult in a war where drones already monitor every move. Muddy swamps may soon freeze over. Ukraine will need to decide where to prioritize its limited troops and weaponry, Lee warned.

“Where do they send reinforcements? Because if you focus on holding Kursk, that could put other parts of the front at greater risk,” he said.

Ebel reported from Moscow, Cahlan from Washington. Ellen Francis in Brussels, and Alex Horton and Ellen Nakashima in Washington, contributed to this report.

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