All of this begs the question: in the end, was the Kursk offensive worth it? Actually, people have posed that question from the very beginning. When Kiev was deliberating over the invasion, some generals doubted the benefits would be worth the cost.

President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin both claimed that Ukrainian forces were surrounded. Ukraine’s top military commander vowed to “hold the line.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed claims that his troops are surrounded by Russian forces in the Russian region of Kursk on Saturday. "There is no encirclement of our troops," Zelensky wrote on X,