Ukraine said on Wednesday it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with U.S.-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has announced a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into Kursk region on Aug. 6. Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by 2-1/2 years of fighting.
Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s military was responding to the Russian push by strengthening its forces around Pokrovsk, the focus of Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
Speaking in one of his regular televised addresses, he also urged Kyiv’s allies to honour commitments to send munitions for use by the Ukrainian armed forces. “This is fundamental for defence,” he said.
Olaf Scholz, chancellor of Ukraine’s close ally Germany, said he expected Kyiv’s push in Kursk region to be a “very limited operation in terms of space and probably also in terms of time”, adding Berlin had not been consulted in advance.
Ukraine has closely guarded its overarching aims in Kursk region, but said it has carved out a buffer zone from an area Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes.
A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the captured land.
“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? Operators … accurately destroy them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on Telegram messenger.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said Kyiv has made bigger territorial gains in the Kursk region than Moscow has made in Ukraine this year. Russia has called the incursion an escalation.
Ukraine smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on Aug. 6 in an attempt to force Moscow to divert troops from the rest of the front, though Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days.
Russia took the settlement of Zhelanne, which lies less than 20 km (12 miles) to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defence ministry.
Both sides reported being targeted by major drone attacks. Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia; Moscow said its air defences destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region.
Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defence ministry’s military-political department, said Russia had stalled the Ukrainian incursion.
“We halted them and started pushing them back,” Alaudinov told Rossiya state television. He said Ukrainian forces were regrouping and could soon launch a new attack, though he gave no further details.
Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has been halted. Ukraine has kept touting gains, saying it has captured 92 settlements over an area of more than 1,250 square km.
The Ukrainian military, which has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022, has gotten a much needed morale boost from the incursion.
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s national defence committee, said Russia’s priority remained to capture the Donetsk region despite the incursion and that it was not pulling forces from near Pokrovsk to act as reinforcements.
“The enemy indeed began to transfer some troops… But they have a principal position – not to withdraw troops from the Pokrovsk direction,” he was quoted as saying by Espreso.TV media.
(Reuters)