Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, dressed in fatigues, visited a command post near the front in Kursk late Wednesday to cheer on his military’s ejection of Ukrainian forces from much of the territory they had been occupying in the Russian border region.

Kyiv has called on Moscow to respond to the proposed ceasefire - the Kremlin says it is waiting to be briefed by the US.

After clinging for more than seven months to a gradually shrinking area, Ukraine has seen its position worsen sharply in the past week.