Russian troops are reclaiming areas in Kursk Oblast, but efforts to fully push back Ukrainian forces are likely to become more challenging, writes Business Insider.

Despite initial successes during Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk, which saw the capture of over 1,300 square kilometers and numerous settlements, the situation has shifted as Russian forces regroup and intensify their assaults. Over the past weeks, Russian forces have launched a robust counteroffensive, reclaiming control over villages and pushing Ukrainian positions back towards the state border.

Russia had been reducing Ukraine’s hold of “the easy parts to take back,” adding that “they’ll have a much harder time with the rest of the Ukrainian salient, which is still very large,” said William Alberque, a warfare expert at the Stimson Center.

According to him, Ukrainian forces have been retreating from open lands and forests—territory that is difficult to defend.

“While someone might look at the recent advances and say they’re big, I would also say it’s because Ukraine just took so much territory, more than they even intended to defend. 

So it’s very easy now for Ukraine to do some sort of fighting retreats and seed territory that they could never legitimately hold,” noted Alberque.

Meanwhile, Matthew Savill, a military-strategy expert at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, added that Russia has so far reclaimed only the territory that was “easy to take back.”

The report highlights that Ukraine needs to calculate what resources and losses it can afford in Kursk Oblast and ultimately decide if holding Russian territories remains worthwhile.