Ukraine claims to have made further progress in its invasion of Russia and taken more prisoners

Kyiv, Ukraine (AP) – The Ukrainian armed forces continued their major cross-border progress On Wednesday, Russian troops entered Russia's Kursk region for the second time this week and said they had captured more ground, taken more Russian prisoners and destroyed a bomber in attacks on military airports.

Assault troops advanced one to two kilometers further into areas around Kursk on Wednesday, said the commander of the Ukrainian army, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, in a video published on President Volodymyr Zelensky's Telegram channel.

Ukrainian troops have also captured more than 100 Russian soldiers, Syrskyi said. Zelenskyi said they would eventually be exchanged for Ukrainian prisoners of war.

In addition, the troops destroyed a Russian Su-34 fighter jet that was used to fire devastating glide bombs at Ukrainian front lines and cities, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

The surprising advance by the Ukrainians The assault on the Kursk region, which began on August 6, has shaken the Kremlin. The daring operation is the largest attack on Russia since World War II and could involve up to 10,000 Ukrainian troops with tanks and artillery, military analysts say.

Syrskyi claims that Ukrainian troops have advanced to 1,000 square kilometers (about 390 square miles) of the Kursk region, although it was not possible to independently verify this claim.

If this is true and Ukraine does indeed control the entire territory in the Kursk region, it would have captured almost as much Ukrainian land in just one week as Russian forces captured between January and July of this year – namely 1,175 square kilometers, according to calculations by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.

Russian authorities acknowledged Ukrainian successes in the Kursk region but described them as less than Kyiv claimed. Nevertheless, they have evacuated about 132,000 people from the Kursk and Belgorod regions and plan to evacuate another 59,000.

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Wednesday that the military plans to open humanitarian corridors that would allow civilians in Ukrainian-controlled areas of the Kursk region to reach other parts of Russia or Ukraine.

Ukraine also claimed that it carried out the largest attack on Russian military airports since the Kremlin operation began on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. large-scale invasion in February 2022.

A Ukrainian security official told The Associated Press the goal was to weaken Russia's air power advantage. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

A spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Kyiv has no intention of occupying the Russian territory it controls. Rather, it wants to prevent Russia from firing missiles at Ukraine from Kursk, he said.

Analysts say Kiev's armed forces targeted the Kursk region because Russia is vulnerable there due to its weak command and control structures.

“The situation is still very uncertain, but there are clear signs that Russian command and control of the responding units is not yet complete, although the all-important unity of command has not yet been achieved,” said retired U.S. Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, professor and deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University. “The next two to three days will be crucial for both sides.”

In an AP video shot in Ukraine's Sumy region, which borders Kursk and is serving as a starting point for the cross-border advance, analysts say, Ukrainian trucks and armored vehicles drive along roads lined with dense forests.

Meanwhile, a regional state of emergency was declared on Wednesday in the Russian border region of Belgorod, which borders Kursk, amid heavy Ukrainian shelling. A federal state of emergency was declared in Kursk on Saturday.

Belgorod Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov described the situation there as “extremely difficult and tense” as the attacks destroyed homes and caused civilian casualties, unsettling locals.

Children in particular are being brought to safety, Gladkov said on his Telegram channel, adding that about 5,000 children are in camps in safe areas. The day before, he said that about 11,000 people have fled their homes and about 1,000 are in makeshift accommodation centers.

It was not clear how, when and if Ukraine would try to withdraw from the captured territory. The Ukrainian military claims it controls 74 settlements, presumably villages or hamlets, in the Kursk region.

Ukrainian television channel 1+1 released a video report on Wednesday from Sudzha, a Russian town about 10 kilometers from the border. The report showed burnt-out columns of Russian military vehicles and Ukrainian soldiers distributing humanitarian aid to the population and removing Russian flags from an administrative building.

Russia is faced with the question of whether to withdraw troops from the front line in Ukraine's Donetsk region to defend Kursk and halt the Ukrainian advance, where a breakthrough is one of the Kremlin's main war aims.

US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that developments in Russia were “presenting a real dilemma” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden declined to comment further on the top-secret operation until it is over.

The Institute for the Study of War said the invasion was unlikely to change the dynamics of the conflict.

“The Russian authorities are likely to remain extremely reluctant to withdraw Russian military units involved in combat operations from Donetsk and will likely continue to deploy a limited number of irregular forces to Kursk … out of concern about a further slowing of the pace of Russian operations in these higher priority directions,” it said late Tuesday.

A woman in Belgorod told the AP on Tuesday that Ukrainian shelling had been intensifying for about 10 days until a lull came on Monday. The number of people in Belgorod who openly support the war has declined since the increased Ukrainian attacks began, she told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“When there were explosions near the city, when people died and when all this happened before our eyes… and when it affected people personally, they at least stopped openly supporting the war,” the woman said.

In his evening speech on Tuesday, Zelensky said the Kursk operation should also lift the mood in the country after 900 days of war and send a strong signal of Ukraine's military capabilities.

“Now all of us in Ukraine must act as unitedly and efficiently as we did in the first weeks and months of this war, when Ukraine seized the initiative and began to turn the situation to the advantage of our state,” Zelensky said.

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Burrows reported from London. Barry Hatton contributed to this report in Lisbon, Portugal.

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