Was the Ukrainian withdrawal from Russia's Kursk region a precondition for the US-supervised negotiation of a ceasefire with Russia? In the early hours of Wednesday, March 12, Russian soldiers planted their flag on top of a water tower in the center of the town of Sudzha, the main stronghold of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF). Sudzha, which had a population of 5,000 before the Ukrainian incursion, is the only major Russian settlement to have been conquered by Kyiv since August 6, 2024, and is only 10 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

In recent days, the UAF have been gradually withdrawing from the pocket of the Kursk region they took control of seven months ago. Already under pressure from a Russian military force six times larger, they have been severely penalized by the American decision on March 5 to no longer provide them with military intelligence. The lack of images showing groups of prisoners or significant captures of abandoned Ukrainian weapons suggests that the fighting was not of great intensity. In three years of war, Ukrainian forces have almost always put up stubborn resistance when in a defensive posture, but this was clearly not the case in the Kursk region over the past week.

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