Ukraine says it hits pontoon bridges in Russia, Moscow reports gains

Ukraine said on Wednesday it was destroying Russian pontoon bridges with US-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, as Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.

Kyiv has reported a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into Russia’s Kursk region on August 6, but Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by two-and-a-half years of fighting.

A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the pocket of captured land.

“Where do Russian pontoon bridges ‘disappear’ in the Kursk region? Operators ... accurately destroy them,” Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said on Telegram messenger.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has said Kyiv’s advance into the Kursk region has made bigger territorial gains than those made by Moscow in Ukraine this year. Russia has called it an escalation.

Ukraine smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on August 6 in an attempt to force Moscow to divert troops from the rest of the front, though Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days.

Russia took the settlement of Zhelanne, which lies less than 20km to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defence ministry. Kyiv’s military has not directly commented on Russia’s advances near Pokrovsk, while reporting heavy fighting nearby.

Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defence ministry’s military-political department, said that Ukrainian forces had been halted in the Kursk region.

“We halted them and started pushing them back,” Alaudinov told Rossiya state television. He said Ukrainian forces were regrouping and could soon launch a new attack, though he gave no further details.

Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has been halted. Ukraine has continued to tout gains and says it has captured 92 settlements over an area of more than 1,250 square km.

The incursion have given a much-needed morale boost for the Ukrainian military, which has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022.

Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s national defence committee, said Russia’s priority remained to capture the Donetsk region despite the incursion and that it was not pulling forces from near Pokrovsk to act as reinforcements.

“The enemy indeed began to transfer some troops... But they have a principal position - not to withdraw troops from the Pokrovsk direction,” he was quoted as saying by Espreso.TV media.

Strikes on logistics

The United States has denied that it knew anything about the Ukrainian operation.