Russia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday that its forces recaptured the second-to-last village in the Kursk region still held by Ukrainian forces, coming just weeks after Moscow staged a surprise counteroffensive in the key border town of Sudzha.
“During offensive operations, units of the Northern Group of Forces liberated the village of Oleshnya,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement published on Telegram.
Ukraine’s surprise incursion into the Kursk region in August marked the largest ground offensive against Russia since World War II. But in recent months, Russian troops have taken back much of the territory Ukrainian forces initially captured in the border region.
In March, hundreds of Russian special forces crawled 15 kilometers through an unused section of pipeline, which once carried Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine, in order to carry out a sneak attack on Ukrainian forces in Sudzha.
With Oleshnya now under Russian control, the only village in the Kursk region still held by Ukrainian forces is Gornal, around 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) south of Oleshnya.
Also on Saturday, a Ukrainian drone strike on a car in Russia’s Kursk region killed a woman and injured a man and a child, Acting Governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram.
AFP contributed reporting.
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