Kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that the bold military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region was aimed at creating a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from Moscow across the border.
This is the first time that Zelensky has clearly stated the goal of the operation, launched on August 6. Previously, he said the operation was aimed at protecting communities in the border region of Sumy from constant shelling.
“Our main task in defensive operations now is to destroy Russia’s war potential as much as possible and to carry out maximum counteroffensive actions. This includes creating a buffer zone on the territory of the aggressor – our operation in the Kursk region,” Zelensky said in his evening speech.
Over the weekend, Ukraine destroyed a key bridge in the region and struck a second nearby, disrupting supply lines as it carried out a stunning cross-border incursion that began Aug. 6, officials said.
Pro-Kremlin military bloggers have acknowledged that the destruction of the first bridge over the Seim River, near the town of Glushkovo, would hamper the supply of Russian forces repelling the Ukrainian incursion, although Moscow could still use smaller pontoons and bridges. The head of the Ukrainian air force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, posted a video Friday of an airstrike that cut the bridge in two.
Less than two days later, Ukrainian troops struck a second bridge in Russia, according to Oleshchuk and Russian regional governor Alexei Smirnov.
As of Sunday morning, no official source has reported the exact location of the attack. But Russian Telegram channels reported that a second bridge over the Seim River, in the village of Zvannoe, had been hit.
According to the Russian news site Mash, the attacks left only one bridge intact in the area. The Associated Press could not immediately verify the reports. If confirmed, the Ukrainian strikes would further complicate Moscow’s attempts to replenish its forces and evacuate civilians.
Glushkovo is located about 12 kilometers north of the Ukrainian border and about 16 kilometers northwest of the main combat zone of Kursk. Zvannoe is located 8 kilometers to the northwest.
kyiv has so far said little about the aims of its advance into Russia with tanks and other armoured vehicles, the largest attack on the country since World War II, which took the Kremlin by surprise and saw dozens of villages and hundreds of prisoners fall into Ukrainian hands.
The Ukrainians have pushed deep into the region from several directions, meeting little resistance and sowing chaos and panic as tens of thousands of civilians fled. Ukraine’s commander-in-chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, claimed last week that his forces had advanced across 1,000 square kilometers of the region, though it has not been possible to independently verify how much Ukrainian forces actually control.
In his remarks on the creation of a buffer zone, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces “have achieved good, very necessary results.”
Analysts say that while Ukraine might try to consolidate its gains in Russia, it would be risky given kyiv’s limited resources, as its own supply lines extending deep into Kursk would be vulnerable.
The incursion demonstrated Ukraine’s ability to seize the initiative and boosted its morale, which had been undermined by the failure of a counteroffensive last summer and months of crushing Russian gains in the eastern Donbass region.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said during his visit to China in May that Moscow’s offensive that month in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine was aimed at creating a buffer zone there.
The offensive opened a new front and displaced thousands of Ukrainians. The attacks were a response to Ukrainian shelling of the Russian region of Belgorod, Putin said.
“I have said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a health zone,” he said. “That is what we are doing.”
Ukraine’s advance toward Kursk resembles its lightning operation in September 2022, led by Syrskyi, in which his forces regained control of the northeastern Kharkiv region after taking advantage of Russian manpower shortages and a lack of field fortifications.
On Saturday, Zelensky urged Kiev’s allies to lift remaining restrictions on the use of Western weapons to attack targets deeper in Russia, including Kursk, saying his troops could deprive Moscow “of any ability to advance and cause destruction” if they had sufficient long-range capabilities.
“It is crucial that our partners remove the obstacles that prevent us from weakening Russian positions as this war requires. (…) The bravery of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions by our partners,” Zelensky said on the X social platform.
The Russian Foreign Ministry and pro-Kremlin bloggers have claimed that American-made HIMARS launchers were used to destroy bridges across the Seim River. These claims could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian leaders have repeatedly requested authorization to launch long-range strikes on Russian airbases and other infrastructure used to pound Ukraine’s energy facilities and other civilian targets, including with upgraded Soviet-era “glider bombs” that have pounded Ukraine’s industrial east in recent months.
Moscow also appears to have stepped up attacks on kyiv, targeting it with ballistic missiles for the third time this month on Sunday, according to the head of the city’s military administration. Serhii Popko said in a Telegram message that the “almost identical” August strikes on the capital “most likely used” KN-23 missiles supplied by North Korea.
Another attempt to target kyiv took place around 7 a.m., Popko said, this time with Iskander cruise missiles. Ukrainian air defenses shot down all the missiles fired in both attacks on the city, he added.
Meanwhile, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mr. Ismailov, said on Saturday that the security situation at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia nuclear power plant was deteriorating.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Grossi called for “maximum restraint by all parties” after an IAEA team on the ground reported that an explosive carried by a drone had detonated just outside its protected area.
Grossi said the impact occurred “close to essential irrigation ponds” and about 100 meters from the only power line supplying the plant. The IAEA team on site reported intense military activity in the area over the past week, it added.
kyiv and Moscow have accused each other of responsibility for attacks near the plant since it was seized by Russian forces at the start of the 2022 invasion, including a fire last weekend. Grossi said the fire caused “considerable damage” but posed no immediate danger to nuclear safety.
Russia’s ally Belarus has deployed “nearly a third” of its military along its border with Ukraine, according to authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko.
Lukashenko told Russian state television that Minsk was responding to the deployment of more than 120,000 Ukrainian troops to the 1,084-kilometer-long border. Belarus’ professional army numbers more than 60,000 men.
Ukrainian border forces spokesman Andrii Demchenko said on Sunday that they had not observed any signs of Belarusian troop build-up.
Lukashenko, in power for three decades, relied on Russian support to suppress the largest protests in Belarus’ post-Soviet history after his 2020 re-election, widely seen as a sham both at home and abroad. He allowed Russian troops to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine and let Moscow deploy tactical nuclear weapons on its soil.
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