When Kyiv first crossed into Russia’s Kursk oblast in August 2024 it did something most strategists thought improbable. Ukrainian units seized a shallow but politically potent salient, including the town of Sudzha, and for months kept Russian attention and resources fixed on a border zone that Moscow had treated as secure. That operation altered perceptions about Ukrainian reach and created a bargaining card that was as much diplomatic as it was military.
Moscow answered with force. In the winter and spring of 2025 Russian formations mounted a determined counteroffensive aimed at cutting the salient off and ejecting Ukrainian forces. By mid March Russian authorities declared the recapture of key settlements and the restoration of control in parts of the Kursk pocket. Those advances were real on a map. They were not, however, the clean, low-cost triumph that Kremlin messaging suggested. The fighting around Sudzha and adjacent villages produced heavy losses, persistent small‑unit actions, and tactical stalemate in several sectors even after Moscow’s announced gains.
Two operational features explain why the Russian drive has not converted tactical pushes into strategic closure. First, Moscow sought to blunt Ukraine’s asymmetric advantages with unconventional force mixes and novel tactics, including the deployment of foreign manpower and attempts to exploit emerging unmanned systems such as fiber‑optic tethered drones to limit Ukraine’s stand‑off options. Those methods created local shock effects but they did not restore operational elasticity to Russian command and logistics. Second, Kyiv’s campaign was not a simple grab of terrain to hold indefinitely. It was calibrated to force Russian resource allocation choices across multiple fronts, to impose attritional costs, and to retain the capacity to conduct strikes deep inside Russian logistics and infrastructure. Those aims change how you judge success.
By late 2025 the conflict dynamics around Kursk had evolved into something less absolute than the language of territorial conquest implies. Even where Russia reasserted administrative control over towns once held by Kyiv, Ukrainian capabilities to strike military systems, logistics nodes, and energy infrastructure inside Russia persisted. Open source and reporting from early November 2025 showed renewed Ukrainian strikes on Russian industrial and military targets, and local outages and damage in Kursk oblast linked to cross‑border activity. Those incidents are concrete indicators that Kyiv retains operational reach and that Moscow cannot treat the border as fully secured.
Put bluntly, Moscow’s counter did not produce the decisive operational closure Russian planners sought. When a counteroffensive removes some units from the salient but leaves behind persistent enemy interdiction, special operations risk, and the political optics of an earlier incursion, it has only achieved partial success. The result is a zone of ongoing friction rather than finality. That friction forces Moscow to keep sizeable forces under arms near the border and diverts manpower and materiel from other priority axes. That outcome is itself a form of strategic leverage for Kyiv, even when its ground presence shrinks.
What does this mean for the months ahead? First, expect continued low to medium intensity contestation along the border, punctuated by targeted Ukrainian strikes on systems that enable Russian firepower and logistics. Second, the Kursk episode reinforces a broader conclusion about modern ground wars: possession of surface terrain is necessary but not sufficient to eliminate an adversary’s ability to impose costs. Precision fires, drones, special operations and political messaging together prolong contestation even after a conventional counteroffensive claims terrain. Finally, the diplomatic vector is clear. Kyiv’s ability to threaten depth inside Russia complicates any Russian negotiating position that rests on simple assertions of regained territory. Conversely, Moscow’s inability to fully neutralize that threat without bearing heavy losses reduces the credibility of any claim that the Kursk episode is closed for good.
Policymakers and analysts must therefore treat the Kursk direction as a continuing operational problem not a concluded campaign. For Ukraine the objective will be to preserve strike capacity while limiting attrition among units still operating at or beyond the border. For Russia the challenge is to convert local tactical recoveries into lasting denial of enemy activity without grinding its forces to ruin. Neither side has an easy path. What the past year has shown is that modern battlefield control is rarely binary, and that the Kursk salient will remain a barometer of how technology, mobilization practices, and diplomacy reshape the conflict’s trajectory.