Responding to the Kursk attack, Russia is bombing the Ukrainian capital

MOSCOW – Russia their attacks on Ukraine continued even as Ukrainian forces advanced into Russia’s Kursk border region.

A Russian missile started a fire​​​​ in the city of Sumy that injured two people and damaged cars and nearby buildings, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said. They said the attack included Iskander-K cruise missiles and aerial bombs.

The Ukrainian air force also said it shot down 14 Russian drones, including over the Kyiv region.

Meanwhile, fighting continues in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since August 6 in an attempt to shift the Kremlin’s military focus away from the front lines in Ukraine.

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces said they had captured the town of Sudzha, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border. With a population of about 5,000 before the war, it was the largest city that fell to Ukrainian soldiers since the beginning of the invasion.

Associated Press journalists traveled to the region on Friday on a trip organized by the Ukrainian government. Artillery fire has destroyed a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in the central town square, while the bright yellow facade of the local administration building is ablaze and riddled with bullet holes.

Alexander Kots, a military correspondent for the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said Ukraine’s pressure on Kursk “has not weakened.”

“On the main part of the uneven front line, the situation has calmed down. However, there are several areas where the enemy continues to try to expand the bridgeheads,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge over the Seym River in the Glushkovsky region with a US-made HIMARS rocket, marking the first use of such a rocket in the Kursk region. .

Zakharova’s statement could not be independently verified, although the Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, said geolocation photos released on August 16 showed that the bridge collapsed after the attack .