‘Surrender’

President Vladimir Putin has called for beleaguered Ukrainian troops in the Russian region of Kursk to "surrender" as Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky accused the Russian leader of seeking to sabotage a ceasefire initiative.

US President Donald Trump urged Putin to spare the lives of the Ukrainian troops as he said his envoy had held "productive" talks with Russia's leader on a proposed 30-day ceasefire.

Russia has mounted a rapid counteroffensive in the western border region of Kursk over the past week, recapturing much of the territory Ukraine seized in a shock incursion last August.

Defeat in Kursk would be a major blow to Ukraine's plans to use its hold on the region as a bargaining chip in peace talks for the three-year-old war.

"We are sympathetic to President Trump's call," Putin said in remarks broadcast on Russian television.

"If they lay down their arms and surrender, they will be guaranteed life and dignified treatment," Putin said.

Trump said "thousands" of Ukrainian troops were "completely surrounded by the Russian military, and in a very bad and vulnerable position".

However, Zelensky yesterday denied his troops were encircled in Russia's Kursk region, where Moscow has regained swathes of land this week.

Zelensky has acknowledged that the situation in the Kursk area is "very difficult" for Ukraine, but contradicted Trump's comments.

"There is no encirclement of out troops," he said on social media, adding that: "Our troops continue to hold back Russian and North Korean groupings in the Kursk region."

Kyiv had hoped to use the Russian territories as a bargaining chip in any negotiations to end the more than three-year conflict.

The UK yesterday hosted a virtual summit on how to protect any ceasefire in Ukraine, but Zelensky warned that Moscow was intent on "prolonging the war" and "ignoring diplomacy."

He also accused Moscow of amassing troops on the border with "an intention to attack our Sumy region" -- attacked by Moscow at the start of its 2022 invasion but since spared the worst of the fighting seen in other eastern regions.

Putin had this week not committed to an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine proposed by the US, instead putting forward conditions and raising "serious questions" about the idea.

The Kremlin has hailed its troops ousting Ukrainian forces from swathes of the Kursk region, with Moscow yesterday releasing images of a destroyed centre in Sudzha -- the main town occupied by Ukrainian forces for months.

The Russian defence ministry said troops took control over the villages of Zaoleshenka and Rubanshchina -- north and west of Sudzha.

Sudzha was home to around 6,000 people before fighting began and Ukraine had set up a military administration there after its shock August 2024 incursion.

The Russian defence ministry's footage showed heavily destroyed houses and shops, with rubble and broken glass on the streets, and some Russian flags flying.

The acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinstein, said Russia had evacuated 275 civilians from areas it had regained since Wednesday.

Russia had also deployed almost 200 firefighters to help put out a fire at an oil depot caused by a Ukraine drone strike in the southern Krasnodar region, authorities said.

The governor of the Krasnodar region Veniamin Kondratyev said in the early hours of Saturday that a petrol reserve station in the Black Sea city of Tuapse was "attacked by the Kyiv regime."

Elsewhere on the front, Zelensky claimed the situation around the eastern city of Pokrovsk -- which Russian troops have tried to capture for months -- had "stabilised."

Ukrainian officials also said the number of wounded from a Russian strike a day earlier on Zelensky's hometown Kryvy Rig rose to 14.