Russian forces claim to have pulled off an audacious operation, using a subterranean pipeline to sneak past Ukrainian defenses. The reported operation coincided with a full-on Kremlin effort to push Kyiv’s forces out of Russia’s Kursk region,

President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had trapped the remaining Ukrainian soldiers in its western Kursk region, where they have clung on for more than seven months in one of the key battles of the war.