Russia claimed Thursday that its troops have driven the Ukrainian army out of the biggest town in Russia's Kursk border region, as a senior Kremlin official said that a U.S.-proposed 30-day ceasefire in the war three years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine would help Kyiv by giving its weary and short-handed military a break.

Ukrainian troops sprang one of the biggest surprises of the war by invading Russia's Kursk region last August, and Russia has taken more than seven months to eject them.