CIA intelligence data indicates Ukrainians not encircled in Russia’s Kursk despite Trump’s claims – Reuters

Recently, Ukrainian soldiers have retreated in the Kursk region; however, they are not encircled by Russian forces, as suggested by recent statements from US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. CIA intelligence contradicts these concurrent claims.

Reuters reported this, citing three US and European officials familiar with their countries' intelligence assessments.

According to sources, US intelligence agencies, including the CIA, provided this assessment to the White House over the past week, as confirmed by a US official and another person familiar with the matter.

However, Donald Trump continues to claim that Ukrainian troops are surrounded in the Kursk region in the west of the Russian Federation.

According to US and European intelligence assessments, Ukrainian troops have faced intense pressure from Russian forces, but they are not completely surrounded, the officials assured.

It should be noted that in a post on his social network on March 14, Trump wrote that he asked Putin to save the lives of thousands of Ukrainians, who, according to him, are "completely surrounded" and vulnerable. The Kremlin leader replied that he would do so if they surrendered.

Trump repeated the statement about the "encirclement" of Ukrainian forces during a speech at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Monday and in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday.

Experts described Putin's statement on March 13 that Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region were cut off and would eventually have to "surrender or die" as disinformation designed to show that Russia is offering concessions by saving the lives of Ukrainian soldiers, which gives Putin leverage in the ceasefire negotiations.

The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitoring group, said on March 14 that it had "found no geolocation evidence that Russian forces have surrounded significant numbers of Ukrainian troops in the Kursk region or elsewhere along the front line in Ukraine."

The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces has denied claims that Ukrainian units have been surrounded in the Kursk region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also refuted reports of Ukrainian troops being surrounded, stating that Putin is misrepresenting the real situation on the ground.

The Ukrainian leader has acknowledged that his army is in a difficult situation in the Kursk region and that he expects continued attacks from Russia, which is trying to push Ukrainian troops out of the area.

Zelensky previously noted that Ukraine's armed forces achieved the primary objective of the Kursk operation: withdrawing troops from Pokrovsk, the Kharkiv direction, and Sumy. He later emphasized that the operation in Kursk is ongoing and that Ukrainian soldiers are not encircled.