Ukraine captures around 150 Russian soldiers daily during Kursk invasion

Ukraine has captured about 150 Russian soldiers a day in its surprise cross-border military offensive in Russia's Kursk region, just the first of “several phases” of fighting aimed at Moscow, Kyiv military officials said.

Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the northwestern city of Sumy, claimed that the advancing Kiev forces had captured hundreds of Moscow soldiers on the twelfth day of their incursion, suffering only minimal losses.

“Sometimes there are more than 100 or 150 prisoners of war a day,” Drozdenko told The Guardian about the success and lack of resistance from Kremlin forces.

“They don’t want to fight us,” he added.

Drozdenko's claims come as photographs have been published of Kiev trucks transporting captured soldiers from Moscow, who were caught completely off guard by Ukraine's daring attack on Russian soil on August 6.

The military chief boasted that the invasion had been a great success so far. Hospitals in Sumy reported only a small number of casualties and injuries.

“On the first day of the operation there were only 15 casualties,” he claimed. “Sixty, seventy percent of them were very light and were caused by bomb damage and shrapnel.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has stated that Kyiv wants to increase its “exchange fund” during the invasion as part of its prisoner of war deals with Russia.

Drozdenko added that the current operation in Kursk, the final goal of which remains a top secret in Kyiv, is only the first part of the Ukrainian offensive.

“We are only seeing part of this operation, in the future we will see several phases,” he told the British outlet.

According to experts, Ukraine's attack on Kursk was so successful mainly because Russia kept its border largely unmanned and unprepared and focused on its slow but steady advance in Donbass and Donetsk.

The operation surprised not only Moscow but even the authorities in Sumy, who said they had received no warning that soldiers would march through their city to enter Kursk.

The city has now been attacked with Russian cruise missiles and bombs, which caused a fire and injured two soldiers on Saturday.

The Kremlin had previously accused the Ukrainian armed forces of destroying a strategically important bridge over the Seim River in Kursk on Friday with Western-made missiles.

According to Oleshchuk and Russian regional governor Alexei Smirnov, Ukrainian troops also reportedly hit a second bridge over the Seim River.

Russia's claims have not been verified by independent reports, but if confirmed, the attacks on the bridge could be a way for Kyiv to undermine Moscow's efforts to rebuild its forces in Kursk to take on Ukrainian troops.

With Ukraine now controlling about 640 square kilometers of land in the Kursk region, Zelensky is trying to lift restrictions on arms supplies from its allies, including the United States, to allow Kyiv to fight more intensively and effectively on the Russian side.

“It is critical that our partners remove the barriers that prevent us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war requires,” Zelensky said in a statement. “…The courage of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions by our partners.”

With post wires