Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday said his forces were “strengthening” their positions in Russia’s Kursk region, where Kyiv has been mounting a major ground offensive for more than 11 days.
His comments came a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of destroying a key bridge over a river in the border region, as Kyiv seeks to disrupt supply routes and the movement of Moscow’s troops in the area.
Ukrainian army chief Oleksandr Syrsky “reported on the strengthening of the positions of our forces in the Kursk region and the expansion of stabilised territory”, Zelensky said in a post on Telegram.
“As of this morning, we have replenished the exchange fund for our country,” Zelensky said, referring to Russian soldiers Ukraine has captured to be used in future prisoner swaps.
“I thank all the soldiers and commanders who are taking Russian soldiers prisoner and thus bringing the release of our soldiers and civilians held by Russia closer,” Zelensky said.
Kyiv claims to have taken control of more than 80 settlements in the lightning incursion, which caught the Kremlin off guard almost two and a half years into its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday it had pushed back Ukrainian forces near three settlements in the Kursk region, and was searching for “mobile enemy groups” trying to pierce deeper into the country.
Russian officials on Friday accused Ukraine of striking a strategically important bridge just a couple dozen kilometres away from fighting in the Kursk region.
The region’s governor, Alexei Smirnov, said on Friday evening the bridge was in the Glushkovsky district, some 11 kilometres (seven miles) away from the border.
An aerial video published by Ukrainian air force commander Mykola Oleshchuk appeared to show the bridge being hit by a projectile at high speed before collapsing in a cloud of smoke.
“Ukrainian pilots are conducting precision strikes on enemy strongholds, equipment concentrations, as well as on enemy logistics centres and supply routes,” he said on Telegram.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the bridge was “completely destroyed” and that “volunteers providing assistance to the evacuated civilian population were killed”.
“All those responsible for these inhumane acts will be severely punished,” she said.
Russia yesterday also accused Ukraine of dropping an explosive charge on a road near the occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine.
The plant, which was seized by Russia’s forces early in the war, has come under repeated attacks that both sides have accused each other of carrying out.
Russia meanwhile attacked at least four Ukrainian regions yesterday, according to officials, including the northeastern region of Kharkiv, where prosecutors said shelling killed a 49-year-old woman.
While the incursion has delivered a major morale boost to Kyiv, it appears to have had little impact on the larger battles raging in Russian-occupied parts of eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky yesterday said there had been “dozens of Russian assaults” on Ukrainian positions near the towns of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, where Moscow has made a string of advances in recent weeks.
Meanwhile, Germany, the second largest contributor of aid to war-torn Ukraine, plans to halve its bilateral military aid to Kyiv in 2025, a parliamentary source told AFP yesterday.
Instead, the government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz will bank on money generated by frozen Russian assets to continue supporting Kyiv, and is not planning any “additional aid” to the four billion euros ($4.4 billion) set aside in next year’s budget.
This year aid from Berlin amounted to eight billion euros.
To compensate, Germany is counting on “the creation, within the framework of the G7 and the European Union, of a financial instrument using frozen Russian assets”, said a separate source from inside the finance ministry.
