KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday made his first visit to Ukraine’s northeastern border region, from where the military launched its offensive. Surprise attack on Russia They occupied dozens of settlements more than two weeks ago.
Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had claimed control of a new village in Russia’s Kursk region and had captured more Russian prisoners in what he described as an “exchange fund” to trade for captured Ukrainians.
“Another settlement in the Kursk region has come under Ukrainian control, replenishing the exchange fund,” Zelensky wrote on social media platform X after hearing a report from military commanders. General Oleksandr Shirsky.
Zelensky did not name the newly captured villages or cross the border into Russian mainland, in what would be seen as a major provocation by Moscow. He has previously said Ukraine has no plans for a long-term occupation of the region, but wants to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from the region into Ukraine.
Zelensky said: Operation Kursk The operation, which began on August 6, has led to a decrease in Russian artillery bombardment and a reduction in civilian casualties in the Sumy region of northern Ukraine.
The bold invasion of Ukraine has rattled the Kremlin. Russia’s vulnerability And it undermined President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to portray Ukraine as largely untouched by the two-and-a-half-year war.But the incursion comes as Ukraine continues to lose ground in the eastern Donetsk region.
Authorities in Kursk, the capital of the Kursk Oblast, have begun installing concrete shelters at bus stations and other parts of the city to protect against artillery fire, and are planning similar work in Zheleznogorsk and Kurchatov, home to the Kursk nuclear power plant, the Oblast’s acting governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on his Telegram channel.
Putin has ordered the creation of self-defense forces in Russian regions bordering Ukraine, the Russian leader said in a video call with officials.
Smirnov informed Putin that more than 133,000 people have been evacuated from areas affected by the fighting in the Kursk region, but more than 19,000 remain.
The governor of Bryansk Oblast, another Russian region that borders Ukraine, said authorities there had conducted drills for emergency evacuations from the border area if necessary.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defense reported that it had repelled attacks by Ukrainian forces near the villages of Komarovka, Malaya Loknya, Korenevka and several other settlements in the Kursk Region.
Education Minister Sergey Kraftsov said that 114 schools in Russia’s border regions will start offering remote learning at the start of the new school term in early September.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II, comes as Kiev continues to lose power in eastern Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that Russian forces had claimed control of the village of Mezhove in Donetsk Oblast, part of the industrial Donbas region that Moscow is seeking to take full control of.
Both sides in the war are using drones to launch strikes deep behind enemy lines.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine had attacked Russia with 28 drones overnight, shooting down 13 over Volgograd Oblast, seven over Rostov Oblast, four over Belgorod Oblast, two over Voronezh Oblast, and one each over Bryansk and Kursk Oblasts.
Volgograd Region Governor Andrei Bocharov said on Thursday that a drone attack had set a military installation on fire in the Malinovka region, home to a Russian airbase, without specifying the extent of the damage.
Videos shared on Russian social media showed an explosion in the night sky near what appeared to be the base, Malinovka, about 300 kilometers (185 miles) east of the Ukrainian border.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack. Ukrainian security forces and Ukrainian military special operations forces carried out a drone strike Wednesday night on the Malinovka airfield, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russian law enforcement agencies, reported that one drone was shot down a few kilometers away from an airfield near Malinovka, while the wreckage of the other fell on a trailer near an airbase, catching fire.
Data from NASA’s fire satellite, which monitors forest fires around the world, showed the fire breaking out around the tarmac at the air force base where the fighter jets were parked.
Another fire broke out in Russia’s Rostov region on Thursday, after firefighters struggled for a fifth day to put out the blaze. Oil storage facility fire The fire broke out after a Ukrainian military offensive in the city of Proletarsk, and 47 firefighters were injured while trying to put out the blaze, state news agency TASS reported.
Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press on Thursday showed the fire at the oil depot still burning fiercely as of Wednesday. Storage tanks at the facility appeared to be engulfed in flames. The images showed flames and thick, black smoke drifting west of the city of Proletarsk.
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Associated Press writers Emma Burrows in London and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed.
