Russia battled on Sunday to drive the last Ukrainian soldiers from western Russia, Russian officials said, after a seven-month incursion by Ukraine that aimed to distract Moscow's forces, gain a bargaining chip and rile President Vladimir Putin.

The daring campaign Ukraine launched last summer to seize and occupy Russian territory appears to be nearing an end.

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,