Russian missile strike sparks blaze in Ukraine as Ukrainian forces continue to push into Russia’s Kursk region

A Russian missile strike sparked a blaze in the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Saturday, while Ukrainian forces continued to push into Russia’s Kursk border region.

Two people were injured in the Sumy strike, which also damaged cars and nearby buildings, said Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.

Ukraine’s air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.

Last month, Russia launched dozens of missiles at cities across Ukraine in an attack that killed at least 31 people and smashed into a children’s hospital in Kyiv, officials said. Explosions rang out and black smoke could be seen rising from the centre of Kyiv, AFP journalists reported.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since Aug. 6 in a bid to divert the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.

Alexander Kots, military correspondent with the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “is not weakening yet.”

“In the main sections of the ragged 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.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge across the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district with U.S.-made HIMARS rockets, marking their first use in the Kursk region.

Zakharova’s statement couldn’t be independently confirmed, although the Washington-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated footage published on Aug. 16 showed that the bridge had collapsed following the strike.

Russian military bloggers said that the destruction of bridges would impede deliveries of supplies to Russian forces, but not cut them off completely.

“No one has canceled the pontoons,” said Kots, stressing that the Seim River is smaller than Ukrainian waterways such as the Dnieper River. “And there are still smaller bridges.”

Russia has seen previous raids on its territory in the war, but the Kursk incursion is notable for its size, speed, the reported involvement of battle-hardened Ukrainian brigades and the length of time they have stayed inside Russia. As many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops are involved, according to Western military analysts.

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 local opposition party Yabloko, told the AP.

“No one expected that this kind of conflict was even possible in the Kursk region. That is why there is such confusion and panic, because citizens are arriving (from front-line areas) and they’re scared, very scared,” he said.

Ukrainian forces have also captured a number of Russian troops as they have moved across the region.

On Friday, the AP visited a detention center in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be disclosed due to security restrictions. Dozens of POWs were seen, some of them walking with their hands tied behind their backs while a guard led them down a corridor. Some had rations of a thin soup with cabbage and onions.

On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel and said the country’s “exchange fund” that it would use to bargain for the return of Ukrainian POWs was being replenished.

“I thank all our soldiers and commanders who are capturing Russian military personnel, thereby advancing the release of our warriors and civilians held by Russia,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.