Ukrainian forces smashed across the Russian border on August 6, 2024, and grabbed a slice of land inside Russia in a bid to distract Moscow's forces from the front lines in eastern Ukraine and to gain a potential bargaining chip.
But a lightning Russian advance in the past few days has left Ukraine with a sliver of less than 200 square kilometres in Kursk, down from 1300 sq km at the peak of the incursion last summer, according to the Russian military.
"Our task in the near future, in the shortest possible time frame, is to decisively defeat the enemy entrenched in the Kursk region," Putin told generals in remarks televised late on Wednesday.
"And of course, we need to think about creating a security zone along the state border."
Putin made his visit to the Kursk region, dressed in a green camouflage uniform, as US President Donald Trump said he hoped Moscow would agree to a ceasefire and said that if not then Washington could cause Russia financial pain.
Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia's General Staff, told Putin that Russian forces had pushed Ukrainian forces out of more than 86 per cent of the territory they had once held in Kursk, the equivalent to 1100 sq km of land.
Gerasimov said Ukraine's plans to use Kursk as a bargaining chip in possible future negotiations with Russia had failed and its gambit that its Kursk operation would force Russia to divert troops from its advance in eastern Ukraine had also not worked.
He said Russian forces had retaken 24 settlements and 259 sq km of land from Ukrainian forces in the past five days along with more than 400 prisoners.
Russia's operation to eject Ukrainian forces from Kursk had entered its final stage, state news agency TASS reported on Thursday, citing Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
Ukraine's top army commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Wednesday that Kyiv's troops would keep operating in Kursk as long as needed and that fighting continued in and around the town of Sudzha.
The US on Tuesday agreed to resume weapons supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine after Kyiv said at talks in Saudi Arabia that it was ready to support a ceasefire proposal.
The Kremlin said it was carefully studying the results of that meeting and awaited details from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House national security adviser Mike Waltz.Â
Later on Wednesday, the White House said Waltz had spoken with his Russian counterpart.
Speaking to reporters when his plane refuelled in Ireland, Rubio said: "Here's what we'd like the world to look like in a few days: neither side is shooting at each other, not rockets, not missiles, not bullets, nothing ... and the talking starts."
Two people familiar with the matter said Russia has presented Washington with a list of demands for a deal to end the Ukraine war and reset relations with the United States.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed this week's meeting in Saudi Arabia between US and Ukrainian officials as constructive, and said a potential 30-day ceasefire with Russia could be used to draft a broader peace deal.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early 2022 has left hundreds of thousands of dead and injured, displaced millions of people, reduced towns to rubble and triggered the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West in six decades.
