On August 17, 2024, a residential area in Sumy, Ukraine, was hit by a Russian missile. People gathered in front of a damaged shopping mall with charred car wrecks nearby.
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Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine on Saturday despite Ukrainian troops advancing into Russia’s Kursk border region.
Ukraine’s state emergency service said a Russian missile sparked a fire in the city of Sumy, injuring two people and damaging cars and nearby buildings. The attack allegedly involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.
The Ukrainian Air Force also stated that it shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including drones over the Kiev region.
Meanwhile, fighting continues in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since August 6 in an effort to shift the Kremlin’s military focus away from the Ukrainian front.
On Thursday, Ukrainian forces said they had captured the town of Suja, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border. With a pre-war population of about 5,000, it was the largest town to fall since the invasion by Ukrainian troops.
Associated Press journalists traveled to the region on Friday during a trip organized by the Ukrainian government. Artillery fire blew the statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin into pieces in the town’s central square, and the bright yellow exterior wall of the local administration building was scorched and riddled with bullet holes.
Alexander Kotz, a military correspondent for the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “has not yet abated”.
“In the main areas of the front line, the situation has stabilized. But in some areas the enemy continues to try to expand its bridgeheads,” he wrote on the Telegram channel.
Ukraine used U.S.-made HIMARS rockets to destroy a bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky region, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Friday, marking the first time they have been used in the Kursk region .
Zakharova’s claims could not be independently confirmed, although the Institute for War Studies, a Washington-based think tank, said geolocation footage released on August 16 showed the bridge collapsed after the attack.
Russian military bloggers said the destruction of the bridge would hinder the delivery of supplies to the Russian military, but would not completely cut off supplies.
“No one is canceling the pontoons,” Coates said, emphasizing that the Semm is smaller than Ukrainian waterways such as the Dnieper. “There are also some smaller bridges.”
Russia has carried out attacks on its territory before in the war, but the Kursk invasion stood out for its size, speed, reported involvement of battle-hardened Ukrainian brigades and the length of time they spent inside Russia. According to Western military analysts, as many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops were involved.
On August 13, 2024, during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian armored military vehicles drove out from the direction of the border with Russia in the Sumy region. On August 6, 2024, Ukraine launched a surprise attack in the Kursk region on the Russian border and occupied more than twenty towns and villages. This was the most serious cross-border attack on Russian territory since World War II.
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The invasion, which Russian authorities said had resulted in the evacuation of more than 120,000 civilians, shocked many, activist Yan Furtsev, a member of the local opposition Yabloko party, told The Associated Press.
“No one expected that such a conflict could happen in the Kursk region. That’s why there is such chaos and panic, because citizens arrive (from frontline areas) and they are scared, very scared,” he said.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry said at a press conference on Saturday that about 10,000 Kursk region evacuees, including 3,000 children, are currently living in 171 temporary accommodation centers across the country.
Ukrainian troops also captured some Russian troops as they traveled through the area.
The charred remains of vehicles remain in the rubble after the end of hostilities in Sudja, Russia, August 16, 2024. The fighting in Kursk began on August 6, 2024, when Ukrainian armed forces crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border near the city of Sudja and began to penetrate deep into Russian territory.
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On Friday, The Associated Press visited a detention center in Ukraine whose location could not be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of prisoners of war, some with their hands tied behind their backs, were seen walking as a guard led them through a corridor. Some were given a thin soup with cabbage and onions.
President Zelensky on Saturday thanked Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel and said the country’s “exchange fund” used to bargain for the return of Ukrainian prisoners of war was being replenished.
“I thank all soldiers and commanders who are capturing Russian military personnel, thereby promoting the release of our fighters and civilians held by Russia,” Zelensky posted on
