Ukraine said on Sunday it had attacked a second key bridge in the Kursk region in a move aimed at disrupting Moscow’s supply routes, as Kiev’s unprecedented invasion of Russian soil continued into a second week.
Meanwhile, Russia has increased pressure in eastern Ukraine and claimed to have captured another village a few kilometres from the Ukrainian-controlled logistics centre Pokrovsk.
“Another bridge was destroyed,” Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk said on Telegram. He also published an aerial video of an explosion on a bridge near the Russian town of Zvinnoye.
“The Air Force aviation is depriving the enemy of its military capabilities through precision air strikes,” he said.
It is unclear when Ukraine launched the attack. Oleshchuk did not give a date, and Russian military bloggers shared images of destruction from the same bridge on Saturday.
Kiev sent troops and armoured vehicles across the border on August 6, its biggest assault on Russian territory since the Kremlin launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On Friday, Ukraine announced it had destroyed a separate bridge in the neighbouring town of Glushkovo.
“Our guys are doing a great job in all areas,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said of operations in the Kursk region in his address on Sunday.
He added that the aim of the Kursk offensive was to “create a buffer zone on the area of the aggressor”, confirming recent comments from senior Ukrainian officials.
But he reiterated his appeal for rapid supplies of key equipment, specifically addressing Britain, France and the United States.
Moving to Pokrovsk
According to Russian military bloggers, the attacks on both bridges over the Seym River, which flows through Kursk, have left Russia with limited options for crossing the river in the region.
Moscow said the destruction of a bridge had hampered evacuation efforts.
The Russian Defense Ministry said in a briefing that it was pushing back Ukrainian troops near several villages.
Russian officials say more than 120,000 people have fled the region since the fighting began.
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that its forces had captured Sviridonivka, another front-line settlement about 15 kilometres (nine miles) from Pokrovsk.
Pokrovsk lies at the crossroads of a major road that supplies Ukrainian troops and towns on the eastern border and has long been a target of the Russian military.
Russian forces have been advancing toward Pokrovsk for several months, capturing a number of small villages to reach the outskirts of the town.
“There have been dozens of attacks in just one day. But our units, our brigades are doing everything possible to hold their positions,” Zelensky said in his evening address.
Sergey Dobryakov, the head of the military administration in Pokrovsk, warned earlier this week that the Russians were about 10 kilometers from the outskirts of the city, and urged remaining residents to evacuate the town.
Earlier on Sunday, the Ukrainian military said it had repelled a Russian missile attack on the capital Kyiv, where air raid sirens sounded before dawn.
There were no reports of damage or casualties in the attack, which the administration said likely involved “North Korean KN-23 type ballistic missiles.”
‘Falling debris’
Ukrainian drones attacked an oil storage facility in Russia’s southern Rostov region on Sunday morning, causing a massive fire, the local governor said.
Videos published on social media showed thick black smoke and flames rising from the location of the fire, which the governor said was in the city of Proletarsk.
“In the southeast of the Rostov region, air defenses thwarted a drone attack. As a result of debris falling on the area of industrial storage facilities in Proletarsk, diesel fuel caught fire,” Governor Vasily Golubev said on Telegram.
“At 05:35 (0235 GMT), firefighting operations at the industrial facility in Proletarsk were halted due to a second drone attack,” he said in an update in the post.
He later said that there were no casualties and firefighting operations resumed shortly afterwards.
A source in Ukraine’s intelligence services said the installations were part of Russia’s “military-industrial complex”.
Proletarsk is about 250 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, and some 350 kilometres from the fighting areas held by Kiev on the eastern Ukrainian border.
Since the conflict began, Kiev has repeatedly targeted Russia’s oil and gas facilities hundreds of kilometres from its borders in what it calls “justified” retaliation for attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Earlier this month, Zelenskyy praised his military for attacking oil plants in Russia, saying the strikes would help bring a “just end” to the conflict.
On the other hand, Ukrainian authorities in the Donetsk region said four civilians were killed and several injured in Russian air strikes.
Five people were injured in a drone attack on a car in the Ukrainian-controlled Kherson region in the south, local investigators reported on Telegram.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
