The Russian Ministry of Defense announced today that it has retaken a village in the Kursk region that Ukrainian forces had seized during their offensive into Russia last summer.

The ministry stated in a release that troops “liberated” Nikolayevo-Darino, a small village near the border with Ukraine.

In early August, Ukraine launched a surprise offensive and claimed to have taken control of several hundred square kilometers in the Kursk region.

This position could be used as a bargaining chip in potential peace talks, while the Ukrainian military faces challenges on its own territory.

Russia launched a counterattack in the Kursk region and, according to Seoul, Kyiv, and Washington, mobilized thousands of North Korean soldiers there.

The Russian military claimed to have recaptured villages in the region, but this partial Ukrainian occupation continues to embarrass the Kremlin.

Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russian authorities have sought to demonstrate that the war has not disrupted the daily lives of Russian citizens, despite aerial bombardments and skyrocketing inflation.

In December, Vladimir Putin admitted that he did not know when his forces would succeed in expelling Ukrainian soldiers from the Kursk region.

The fate of Russian citizens living in the areas under Ukrainian control has recently drawn criticism of the authorities, which, though mild, is highly unusual in Russia.

Some of their relatives have mobilized in recent weeks, demanding their return and posting messages on social media. One such relative, Lyubov Prilutskaya, told Agence France-Presse about her “enormous anger” at her country’s authorities, whom she accuses of inaction. She stated that she has had no news from her elderly parents since August.

A few dozen concerned relatives and residents who had already fled the area organized a protest in mid-January outside the governor’s office in the Kursk region.

The spokesperson for the Ukrainian forces’ administration in the region, Oleksiy Dmitrashkivsky, told Agence France-Presse that 2,000 civilians remain in the occupied area, noting that the fighting makes it difficult to account for them.

An official from the Russian Kursk region told Agence France-Presse last week that authorities are continuously working to secure their return.