Putin hails end of Ukraine's Kursk incursion; Kyiv denies assertion

Moscow: Russian President Vladimir Putin hailed on Saturday what he called the complete failure of an offensive by Ukrainian forces into Russia's Kursk region after they were expelled from the last village Moscow said they had been holding.

Putin, speaking amid intensified diplomatic efforts by the Trump administration to end the Ukraine conflict, said the expulsion of Ukrainian forces from Russian soil opened the way for further Russian successes inside Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces seized a swathe of territory in the Kursk region bordering Ukraine last August in a surprise incursion that embarrassed Putin. Russian forces, later reinforced by North Korean troops, have been trying ever since to drive them out.

"The Kyiv regime's adventure has completely failed," Putin said in video footage released by the Kremlin that showed him receiving a report from the head of Russia's military general staff, Valery Gerasimov.

"The full defeat of the enemy in the Kursk border region creates conditions for further successful actions by our forces on other important parts of the front," Putin added.

Gerasimov told Putin that the last occupied settlement in the Kursk region, the village of Gornal, had been "liberated from Ukrainian units" on Saturday.

"Thus the defeat of the armed formations of the Ukrainian armed forces that had invaded the Kursk region has been completed," Gerasimov said.

Gerasimov also praised the North Korean officers and soldiers' contribution in Kursk, saying they had shown "high professionalism, fortitude, courage and heroism", fulfilling combat tasks "shoulder to shoulder" with Russian servicemen.

North Korea sent an estimated total of 14,000 troops, including 3,000 reinforcements to replace its losses, Ukrainian officials said. Lacking armoured vehicles and drone warfare experience, they took heavy casualties but adapted quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had hoped his forces' seizure of Russian territory would give him a bargaining chip in any future talks to end the war in his country.

Zelenskyy held what the White House described as a "very productive" meeting with US President Donald Trump on Saturday in Rome, where both leaders were attending the funeral of Pope Francis.

Trump is pressuring Zelenskyy to agree to give up some Ukrainian territory to help end the three-year war that has caused large-scale casualties and devastation in cities, towns and villages across Ukraine.

Ukraine's military denied the assertion. The Ukrainian military's general staff, in a statement posted on social media platform Telegram, said its forces were continuing their operations in some districts of Kursk region.

The general staff also said its incursion into another part of Russia, Belgorod region, was still underway.