People gather near the wreckage of burned-out cars outside a damaged shopping mall in a residential area hit by a Russian missile strike on August 17, 2024 in Sumy, Ukraine.
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Russia continued its assault on Ukraine on Saturday even as Ukrainian forces pushed into Russia's Kursk border region.
Ukraine's emergency services said a Russian missile had started a fire in the city of Sumy, injuring two people and damaging nearby cars and buildings. It said the missile had been fired using an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.
The Ukrainian air force also said it shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv area.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been deployed since August 6 in an attempt to shift the Kremlin's military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.
Ukrainian forces said on Thursday they had taken control of the town of Sudzha, 10 kilometers (six miles) from the border. The town, which had a pre-war population of about 5,000, is the largest to fall to Ukrainian forces since the incursion began.
Associated Press journalists traveled to the area on Friday on a trip organized by the Ukrainian government. Artillery fire has destroyed parts of a statue of Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin in the city’s central square, while the bright yellow facade of the local government building is charred and pockmarked with bullet holes.
The Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “has not yet weakened,” said Alexander Kots, military correspondent for the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda.
“In the main sections of the torn front, the situation has stabilized. But there are areas where the enemy continues to try to expand its bridgehead,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
Ukraine has destroyed a bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district with US-made HIMARS missiles, the first use of such missiles in the Kursk region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.
Zakharova's statement could not be independently verified, although the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said geospatial footage released on August 16 showed the bridge collapsed in the wake of the strike.
Russian military bloggers said that destroying the bridges would hinder the delivery of supplies to Russian forces, but would not cut them off completely.
“Nobody has canceled the pontoon bridges,” Coates said, noting that the Sim River is smaller than Ukrainian waterways like the Dnieper. “There are still smaller bridges.”
Russia has had previous incursions into its territory during the war, but the Kursk invasion was notable for its size and speed, the reported involvement of veteran Ukrainian brigades in the fighting, and the length of time they remained inside Russia. According to Western military analysts, up to 10,000 Ukrainian troops are taking part in the operation.
On August 13, 2024, Ukrainian armored military vehicles rolled out from the direction of the border with Russia, in the Sumy region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On August 6, 2024, Ukraine launched a surprise attack on the Russian border region of Kursk, capturing more than two dozen towns and villages in the largest cross-border attack on Russian territory since World War II.
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The incursion, which Russian authorities say has led to the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians, came as a shock to many, Yan Furtsev, an activist and member of the local opposition party Yabloko, told The Associated Press.
“Nobody expected that this kind of conflict would be possible in the Kursk region. That's why there is this confusion and panic, because citizens are arriving (from front-line areas) and they are afraid, very afraid,” he said.
About 10,000 displaced people from the Kursk region, including 3,000 children, are staying in 171 temporary shelters across the country, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said at a news conference on Saturday.
Ukrainian forces also captured a number of Russian soldiers as they moved through the area.
Burnt-out vehicle remains amid the wreckage after hostilities on August 16, 2024 in Sudzha, Russia. The fighting in Kursk began on August 6, 2024, when Ukrainian armed forces crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border near the city of Sudzha and began advancing deep into Russian territory.
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On Friday, The Associated Press visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of prisoners of war were seen, some walking with their hands tied behind their backs as a guard led them through a corridor. Some were eating portions of thin soup with cabbage and onions.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday thanked Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel, and said the “exchange fund” the country will use to negotiate the return of Ukrainian prisoners of war has been replenished.
“I thank all our soldiers and commanders who captured Russian servicemen, contributing to the release of our soldiers and civilians held captive by Russia,” Zelensky said in a post on X.
