A Russian missile attack triggered a fire in the Ukrainian city of Sumy there, when Ukrainian troops continue to push to the Kursk border region of Russia.
Two people were injured in the Sumy attack, which also damaged cars and nearby buildings, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said. He said the attack involved Iskander-K cruise missiles and aerial bombs.
Ukraine’s air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including in the Kyiv region.
AP
last monthRussia launched dozens of missiles at cities across the country Ukraine in an attack that killed at least 31 people and smashed into a children’s hospital in Kyiv, officials said. Explosions rang out and black smoke was seen rising from the center of Kyiv, an AFP reporter reported.
Meanwhile, fighting continues in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since August 6 in an effort to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front lines in Ukraine.
Alexander Kots, a military correspondent with the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian pressure on Kursk “has not weakened yet.”
“In the main part of the ragged front, the situation has stabilized. But there are areas where the enemy continues to try to expand its bridgehead,” he wrote on the Telegram channel.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district with US-made HIMARS rockets, marking its first use in the Kursk region.
Zakharova’s statement could not be independently confirmed, although the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War said geolocated footage published on August 16 showed that the bridge collapsed after the attack.
Russian military bloggers said the destruction of the bridge would hamper the delivery of supplies to Russian forces, but not completely cut it off.
“Nobody canceled the pontoon,” Kots said, stressing that the Seim River is smaller than Ukrainian waterways such as the Dnieper River. “And there are still smaller bridges.”
Russia has seen previous attacks on its territory in the war, but the Kursk offensive is notable for its scale, speed, the involvement of the battle-hardened Ukrainian brigade and the length of time it took in Russia. As many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops are involved, according to Western military analysts.
The attack, which Russian authorities say has led to the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians, was shocking, Yan Furtsev, an activist and member of the local opposition party Yabloko, told the AP.
“No one expected that this kind of conflict could happen in the Kursk region. That’s why there was confusion and panic, because people came (from the front area) and they were afraid, very afraid,” he said. .
Ukrainian forces have also captured some Russian troops as they move into the area.
On Friday, the AP visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which could not be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of prisoners of war appeared, some walking with their hands tied behind their backs as guards led them down the corridor. Some have thin soup rations with cabbage and onions.
On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel and said the country’s “exchange fund” to be used to bargain for the return of Ukrainian prisoners of war had been replenished.
“I thank all the soldiers and commanders who captured Russian military personnel, thus freeing the soldiers and civilians captured by Russia,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.
AP
