UKRAINIAN air strikes destroyed a bridge over the Seim river in the Kursk region and damaged another over the weekend, moves designed to impede Russian troops should they attempt to drive Ukrainian forces out of the country.

Kiev’s strike into Russian territory continued, with the government claiming complete control of the Russian town of Sudzha. So far, 120,000 Russians have been evacuated from the border areas of Kursk and Belgorod, with Ukraine saying it has taken 82 settlements.

Ukraine says its motive for the surprise incursion, which began on August 6, is to bring home to Russians the reality of the war. It is also speculated that if a prospective Donald Trump government in the US halts military aid, control of some Russian territory could be used in negotiations as leverage for the return of Ukrainian territory occupied or annexed by Russia.

Kiev denies wishing to hold any Russian territory, though its forces in Sudzha destroyed the town’s statue of Lenin, with the Culture Ministry posting a photo of the empty pedestal with the rider that “the process of decommunisation continues, in Sudzha too.” Anti-communist laws in Ukraine since 2014’s Maidan coup have seen the dismantling of over 1,300 Lenin statues, the renaming of numerous streets and the outlawing of the country’s large Communist Party.

Russia has continued to prioritise pushing further into Ukraine rather than redeploy troops to Kursk, claiming today to have captured the village of Svyrydonivka in Donetsk as heavy fighting continues in the Pokrovsk area. 

Moscow asserts that it forces have killed hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers since Kiev’s counterattack began, while Ukrainian authorities claimed they had taken another 102 Russian soldiers prisoner over the weekend. In the Russian-held city of Donetsk, Ukrainian shelling hit a shopping centre, killing two people.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said that Ukrainian forces were massing on his country’s border and that he had mobilised over a third of the army to guard it. Kiev did not comment on the accusation.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called again on Saturday for Kiev’s Western arms suppliers to lift restrictions on the use of weaponry across the border, which Washington fears could be treated as an act of war by Nato powers against Russia.