Russian forces recaptured three more settlements in Russia's western Kursk region on Sunday, the Defense Ministry said, part of an operation to expel Ukrainian troops who had held parts of Russian territory for seven months.
The ministry's statement, posted on the Telegram messaging app, followed reports from Russian bloggers that Russian special forces had penetrated for kilometers through a gas pipeline near the town of Sudzha in an attempt to surprise Ukrainian forces.
The three settlements now under Russian control according to the ministry, Malaya Lokhnya, Cherkasskoye Porechnoye and Kositsa, are all located north of Sudzha.
"The armed forces of the Russian Federation are continuing to destroy Ukrainian army groups on the territory of the Kursk region," the statement said.
The previous report by Russian bloggers on the pipeline operation appeared to be a strategy aimed at isolating thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in the region ahead of Ukraine's talks with the United States on a possible peace deal to end the war.
Ukrainian troops captured about 1,300 square kilometers of Russia's Kursk region in August, in what Kiev said was an attempt to gain leverage in future negotiations and force Russia to withdraw forces from eastern Ukraine.
Russia has been pushing to regain control of the region with some success in recent days. Open-source maps on Friday showed Kiev's contingent in Kursk almost surrounded after rapid Russian advances.
Yuri Podolyaka, a pro-Russian military blogger of Ukrainian origin, said that Russian special forces crawled nearly 16 km along the inside of the 1.5-meter-wide gas pipeline and spent several days in the pipe before surprising Ukrainian forces from the rear near Sudzha.