Russia's Defense Ministry says its forces have driven the Ukrainian army out of the biggest town in Russia’s Kursk border region, as U.S. officials sought the Kremlin’s response to a proposed 30-day ceasefire in the three-year that Ukraine has endorsed.

The Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that it recaptured the town of Sudzha, hours after President Vladimir Putin visited his commanders in the region, could not be independently verified.

A ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia, proposed by the U.S., would "give nothing" to Russia while helping Kyiv by giving its weary and short-handed military a break, a Kremlin aide said Thursday.