The Chief of Staff for the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, stated that Russia has regained all the populated areas of the Kursk region on 26 April 2025.
Russian forces had taken the village of Gornal, he said, the last populated area in Kursk under Ukrainian control.
According to the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based open source research group, geolocated footage indicates that Russian forces had advanced along Gora Street in central Gornal.
Gerasimov told his superior, the Supreme Commander in Chief, Russian President Vladimir Putin, that “the plans of the Kiev regime to create a so-called strategic bridgehead and disrupt our [counter] offensive in Donbas have failed.”
However, a day later, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy maintained that Ukraine continues to hold its presence inside Russia in unspecified locations throughout the Kursk and Belgorod regions.
Although, Ukraine’s incursion, which began in August 2024, has diminished considerably since their territorial peak of up to 900 square kilometres inside Russia.
Methods of the Russian counteroffensive
Towards the end of 2024, Russia had begun to lean on 10,000 North Korean soldiers to pressure Ukraine’s forces holding Kursk, avoiding any need to redistribute Russian forces in Eastern Ukraine, where slow progress, albeit operationally insignificant, had been made.
Since then, however, this foreign contingent, whom Gerasimov said “provided significant assistance,” has reduced by 27% of the original combat force, with up to 3,000 killed or wounded as of January 2025.
Another method that enabled the Russian counteroffensive had been their use fibre-optic controlled drones. These uncrewed air vehicles (UAVs) resist any adversarial jamming. Although, this means that their range is limited to around 20 kilometres (12 miles).
Will Ashford-Brown, director of strategic insights at the Heligan Group, a defence analysis and investment company, told Army Technology that there will be “a sustained development” of these denial capabilities.
“Investment is key,” Ashford-Brown added. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence are acting on this and learning from the impact of Russia’s use of fibre-optic controlled UAVs as the department seek to increase the number of their own models.
On 27 April, the Ukrainian government announced it had codified and adopted the domestically produced ‘Hromylo Optic’ UAV. Hromylo Optic drones are already being used by military units, with confirmed reports of successful hits on enemy tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and firing positions.
Since the beginning of 2025, the MoD adopted nearly 40 UAVs with fiber-optic control, including around 15 units in April alone.
