Ukraine blows up bridges to consolidate its positions in Russia

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Ukraine is blowing up bridges to consolidate its positions in Russia’s border region of Kursk as the Kremlin struggles to muster the forces needed to push them out.

Ukrainian force chief Mykola Oleshchuk published two videos over the weekend of air strikes destroying two bridges across the river Seym near the towns of Glushkovo and Zvannoe, which analysts say will hamper Russian military logistics and allow Ukraine to consolidate its positions.

“The Air Force continues to deprive the enemy of its logistical capabilities with precise air strikes, which significantly affects the course of hostilities,” Oleshchuk wrote on Telegram in a post that includes video footage of the bridges being blown up. He added that the strikes also targeted weapons depots, logistics hubs and Russian supply lines.

Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday it was battling Ukrainian forces in four villages about 40km north-west of Sudzha, the town held by Ukraine, as well as around Cherkasskoe Porechnoe, about 15km north of Sudzha.

The Ukrainian side has imposed media silence on the operation and is not reporting real-time battlefield action. It has, however, claimed control over Sudzha, where it set up a military office and floated the possibility of opening up humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians.

While President Vladimir Putin has vowed an “appropriate response” to the daring Ukrainian operation, his forces have so far failed to push back Kyiv’s forces. Moscow, however, has launched more aerial attacks on Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities on Sunday said they repelled a Russian drone and missile attack on Kyiv, as well as on Sumy region from where the Kursk offensive was launched on August 6. The Russian attack also targeted Poltava region between Kyiv and Kharkiv, near the Russian border — but Ukrainian air forces said they intercepted the missiles.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that Russia had used 40 drones, 750 aerial bombs and 200 drones against Ukraine in the past week.

A senior Ukrainian security official told the Financial Times that the operation had caused panic within the upper echelons of Russia’s security leadership. The Russian national guard, the FSB and the Russian defence ministry were “competing and not co-ordinating with each other”, the official said.

Ukrainian troops were in a “very good position”, the official said, as they couldn’t be encircled and were keeping their flanks short to make it easier to defend. The media silence imposed by Kyiv had succeeded in keeping Russian troops in the dark as to the real number of Ukrainian forces in Kursk region, the official added.

Kyiv has insisted it is not seeking to hold the 1,150 sq km of captured territory in Kursk region, beyond using it as a bargaining chip in potential future negotiations.

“Ukraine is not interested in occupying Russian territories,” said presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak late on Friday. He described the operation as a “military tool . . . to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process”.

The president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has warned that Ukraine’s “escalation” could provoke Russia into using nuclear weapons.

In an interview broadcast on Russian state television on Sunday, Lukashenko implied that the Kremlin did not want to use nuclear weapons, but he said any escalation of the war “will end with the destruction of Ukraine”.

“Nobody has ever defeated this empire, and they won’t defeat Russia. How is Nato meant to do it?” said Lukashenko, who has backed Putin in his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly made thinly veiled hints that it could use nuclear weapons, some of which are stationed in Belarus, to stop Ukraine’s forces.

Lukashenko also warned Kyiv against any action on Belarusian territory, saying that “almost a third” of the Belarusian army had been deployed to the border with Ukraine and that the area had been mined “like never before”.