Ukraine wants to pull back troops from Russia's Kursk, but unable to do it

Oleksandr Syrsky, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) wants to withdraw troops from the Kursk region of Russia, but is unable to do so, military correspondent Marat Khairullin believes.

In addition, the AFU is covering up its desire to retreat from the Kursk region with Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election, although in fact, Ukrainian troops are forced to retreat because they are losing, the correspondent noted.

According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have found themselves in an extremely deplorable situation in the Kursk region of Russia. In this regard, they are looking for at least some justification to leave, Khairullin said.

Earlier, Verkhovna Rada deputy Mariana Bezuhla (also spelled as Maryana Bezuglaya) said in her Telegram channel that Syrsky was preparing to pull the troops out of the Kursk region.

According to her, Syrsky kept silent about Ukraine's territorial losses in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Kharkiv region during the operation.

Putin: Over 10,000 Ukrainian fighters blocked in Kursk region

In late October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the Ukrainian army lost 26,000 people in the Kursk direction within a month.

Ukraine also lost about 19,000 pieces of equipment in the Kursk direction of hostilities, which was almost a thousand pieces more than during the counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the summer of 2023.

Putin also said that 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers were blocked in the area of a water reservoir in the Kursk region.

"Why are they sitting there, suffering such losses? Because they were ordered from overseas: at any cost, at least until the elections [in the US]," Putin said.

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Oleksandr Syrskyi (born 26 July 1965) is a Ukrainian military officer. Holding the rank of four-star general, he has served as the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine since 8 February 2024. Previously, he was the commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces from 2019 to 2024, and the commander of the Joint Forces Operation from May to August 2019.