Ukrainian troops take away the body of a Russian soldier in Sudzha in western Russia, August 2024

Thursday’s Coverage: Russia Offers Workers Up to $4000 To Dig Trenches In Kursk

Map: Institute for the Study of War

UPDATE 2016 GMT:

The Ukraine Air Force has confirmed the loss of a MiG-29 fighter jet.

Spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said,”Unfortunately, today we lost a MiG-29. Luckily, everyone is alive. War.” He did not say where and how the aircraft was destroyed.

Earlier in the day, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed an attack with an Iskander-M ballistic missile on an airbase in the Dnipropetrovsk region in south-central Ukraine. The Ministry declared the destruction of a Su-34 bomber that was being equipped with Storm Shadow missiles.

Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhii Lysak said Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian missiles, with Moscow’s attacks causing “several fires”.

UPDATE 2002 GMT:

Ukrainian forces have advanced 1 to 3 km ((0.6 to 1.9 miles) in some areas of Russia’s Kursk region, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi reported to President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday.

“In general, the situation is under control. All activities are being carried out according to the plan, the logistics system is working smoothly,” Syrskyi said.

The commander said fighting is ongoing near the village of Malaya Loknya, around 15 km (9 miles) from the Ukraine-controlled border village of Sudzha.

The advancing Ukrainian forces have destroyed a bridge over the Seim River in the Kursk region in western Russia.

Kursk Governor Alexei Smirnov confirmed the demolition in the Glushkovsky district, where orders to evacuate were given earlier this week.

Posting photos, the Russian Telegram channel Mash said the bridge had been struck multiple times. The channel also claimed that about 30 settlements near the village of Glushkovo, around 150 km (93 miles) from Kursk city, have been cut off due to the attack.

Ukraine Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk published a video of the attack and summarized:

Air Force aviation is actively participating in combat operations in the Kursk sector. Ukrainian pilots are conducting precision strikes on enemy’s strongholds, equipment concentrations, as well as on enemy’s logistics hubs and supply routes.

Russian pro-war blogger Roman Alyokhin, an advisor to the Kursk Governor claimed that Ukrainian forces targeted one of two other bridges in the area: Zvannoe, about 7 km (4 miles) from Glushkovo, during an attempt to seize territory along the river.

UPDATE 1356 GMT:

The Kursk Governor’s office is insisting that advertisements offering workers up to $4000 to dig trenches in the region are fake.

The ads came to light on Wednesday, pointing to the difficulties for Russian defense amid Ukraine’s 10-day cross-border incursion.

A press officer declared that the region already has enough construction workers, and the government hires through different channels.

Staff of the advertising company Avito said that, while its site is now hiding the vacancies in question until it can confirm that the construction companies that posted them are advertising real jobs.

UPDATE 1323 GMT:

A volunteer in Kursk city helping evacuees, Anastasia, tells Meduza about her experience of the Ukrainian incursion into the region:

When it all started, there was no publicity: the State media reported on transgender people at the Olympics. The news that Ukrainian troops had entered the territory of Sudzha was reported late. Friends wrote to me: “The news doesn’t show anything.” Why were transgender people a priority, although they obviously pose no threat?

There are thousands of refugees in Kursk. We lack household chemicals, soap, disposable razors, baby food, diapers. We lack mattresses, bed linen, towels – according to SanPiN standards , such things must be new. Often they bring used ones, but unfortunately we cannot give out such bedding, at best we can only lay it out at the accommodation points.

UPDATE 1111 GMT:

In another sign of Russian unease with the situation in the Kursk region, authorities are seeking to open a criminal case against two journalists of Italy’s State broadcaster RAI who are alongside Ukrainian troops.

RAI’s war correspondents Stefania Battistini and Simone Traini sent a dispatch from Sudzha after Ukraine captured the town. They face prosecution for “illegal crossing of the state border”.

Battistini has shared Article 79 of the Geneva Convention that “journalists in war zones should be treated as civilians and protected accordingly, as long as they do not take part in hostilities”.

UPDATE 1051 GMT:

“Two senior US officials” say Russia appears to have redeployed several thousand troops from occupied territory in Ukraine to the Kursk region amid the Ukrainian incursion.

Officials said multiple brigade-sized elements made up of at least 1,000 troops seem to have redeployed.

A source “familiar with US intelligence said, “We haven’t seen a substantial move just yet, and we can’t tell whether that’s just because they’re only just getting started moving forces, or whether they just don’t have the forces to move.”

Officials said the Russians have also sent personnel to Kursk from the Leningrad military district and the Kaliningrad enclave, between Poland and Lithuania.

National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby cautioned that the movement “doesn’t mean that Mr. Putin has given up military operations in the northeast part of Ukraine or even down towards the south, towards places like Zaporizhzhia. There’s still active fighting along that front.”

Russian forces claimed control of another village in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Serhiivka, on Thursday.

Military authorities in the town of Pokrovsk, about 16 km (10 miles) from the frontline, urged civilians to speed up their evacuation. They said Russian troops are “advancing at a fast pace. With every passing day there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”

UPDATE 1039 GMT:

Seven civilians were killed and 25 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past 24 hours.

Three people were slain in the Donetsk region, two in Kharkiv, and one each in Kherson and Sumy.

Ukraine air defenses shot down three Iran-type kamikaze drones launched by Russia overnight. The Russians also fired three Iskander-M ballistic missiles.

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Ten days after it launched a cross-border incursion, Ukraine has consolidated control in part of the Kursk region in southwest Russia.

In his nightly address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy confirmed the control of Sudzha, with around 5,000 people and about 10 km (6.2 miles) from the border.

Troops closed on Sudzha in the first days of Ukraine’s incursion last week. Ukrainian journalists reported from inside the town on Wednesday, showing soldiers taking down a Russian flag.

Military commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said 82 settlements and an area of 1,150 square km (444 square miles) are now held by Ukraine. Zelenskiy said after the meeting:

General Syrskyi reported on the completion of the liberation of the town of Sudzha from the Russian military. A Ukrainian military commandant’s office is being established there now.

Russian Officials Betray Their Concern

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in the first 24 hours of the incursion that Ukrainian troops had retreated back across the border. Commander-in-chief Gen. Valery Gerasimov said only 1,000 soldiers were involved.

With Ukraine’s control exposing the lies, Russian officials betrayed concern in a series of statements.

Former Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Fedorov complained on State TV about Ukraine’s capture of a nearby gas distribution station, trying to put pressure on European countries to stop the Ukrainian advance.

Smart people in Kyiv have calculated that they should take over this hub, in order that the Russian army will have to destroy it. This means deliveries of gas to Europe will be stopped, because of Russia’s actions, not Ukraine’s. By the way, this will hit Hungary and Slovakia very hard.

In fact, there has been no indication of a disruption to gas flow from Ukraine’s operations.

Russia’s Deputy Ambassador to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, fumed about a “mad and reckless operation”, “What’s happening in Kursk is the incursion of terrorist sabotage groups, so there is no frontline as such….There is an incursion because there are forests that are very difficult to control.”

And Russian legislator Mikhail Sheremet, lying about involvement of foreign troops, stepped up the narrative of doom:

Considering the presence of Western military equipment, the use of Western ammunition and missiles in attacks on civilian infrastructure, and irrefutable proof of foreigners’ participation in the attack on Russian territory, one could come to the conclusion that the world is on the brink of a third world war.