KYIV—Ukraine said on Wednesday it had destroyed Russian pontoon bridges with U.S.-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has Claimed a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into the Kursk region on Aug. 6. Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s military was responding to the Russian push by strengthening its forces around Pokrovsk, the focus of Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
Olaf Scholz, chancellor of Ukraine’s close ally Germany, said he expected Kyiv’s push in the Kursk region to be a “very limited operation in terms of space and probably also in terms of time,” claiming Berlin had not been consulted in advance.
A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in the Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the 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 smashed through the Russian border in the Kursk region on Aug. 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 20 km (12 miles) to the east of the transport hub Pokrovsk, according to the Russian defense ministry.
Both sides reported being targeted by major drone attacks. Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia; Moscow said its air defenses destroyed 45 drones over Russian territory, including 11 over the Moscow region.
Reporting back to Moscow, Major General Apti Alaudinov, commander of Chechnya’s Akhmat special forces and the deputy head of the defense ministry’s military-political department, said Russia had stalled the Ukrainian incursion.
“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.
The Ukrainian military has not made significant gains on its own soil since late 2022
Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s national defense 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.
Reuters confirmed that all the strike locations of pontoon bridges shown in the video were located on or next to the Seym river in the Kursk region.
The video also showed drone strikes on military trucks and other locations described as a Russian munitions warehouse and an electronic warfare complex in the region. Other locations or the date when the video was filmed could not be independently verified.
Separately, Reuters was able to verify that at least one pontoon crossing was apparently destroyed.
It was likely set up between Aug. 14 and Aug. 17 between the Russian settlements of Zvannoe and Glushkovo after two bridges were destroyed or damaged earlier.
The crossing, some 14 km (8.7 miles) from the border, was gone by Aug. 19, satellite imagery showed. Smoke was also visible in images from the area that day.
The Ukrainian statement said U.S.-manufactured HIMARS rocket systems had been used as part of operations to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, Kyiv’s first official statement acknowledging its use of the weapon during its incursion.
Washington has not commented directly on the use of U.S.-made weapons in the Kursk region, while saying U.S. policies have not changed and Ukraine was defending itself from Russia’s ongoing all-out invasion.