Heavy fighting in Russia as Ukrainian forces try to seize more territory | Russia

In Russia itself, heavy fighting continues as Ukrainian troops attempt to capture more territory and use kamikaze drones to blow up a Russian pontoon bridge over a strategic river crossing.

Satellite images showed the makeshift bridge had disappeared on Tuesday, with large clouds of grey smoke rising. Russian forces had built the pontoon between the villages of Zvannoe and Glushkovo after Ukrainian missiles destroyed three bridges over the Seym River.

After a surprise incursion two weeks ago, Ukrainian forces are trying to expand their bridgehead in the Kursk region. An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Russian conscripts are currently stuck in an area south of the river in Glushkovsky district. Some civilians have fled the area in small boats.

On Tuesday, the Ukrainian army reportedly captured another Russian village: Martynovka. Videos also emerged showing Ukrainian soldiers in a fierce firefight in the hamlet of Malaya Loknya near the front line. They fired at Russian soldiers from a Marder armored personnel carrier. Several houses were on fire.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday that his forces controlled more than 1,250 square kilometers of “hostile territory” in and around the Russian border town of Sudzha. The buffer zone now includes 92 settlements that were captured as part of a “defensive operation.”

Zelensky acknowledged that he did not inform close allies about the attack in advance. He said “many representatives of the international community” had dismissed the plan – the first major attack on Russian soil since World War II – as “unrealistic.”

“That's why no one was informed about our preparations. Now the real success speaks for itself,” he said. Ukraine's ground attack proved that Russia's red lines – and its threats to escalate the war – were “naive” and “illusory,” Zelensky said. “They collapsed near Sudzha,” he said.

While Ukraine has made rapid progress in Kursk Oblast, the Russian army is steadily advancing in eastern Ukraine. On Tuesday, the Kremlin confirmed the capture of Niu-York, a town that has been the subject of fighting since 2014. Further fighting took place in Hrodikva, a village near the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, a Russian target and center of the Ukrainian military.

Zelensky acknowledged that the situation in Ukraine's Donetsk region was “difficult.” According to the Ukrainian General Staff, 14 clashes took place in Toretsk, another city Moscow is close to capturing, and 34 in the Pokrovsk sector. Many Pokrovsk residents left the city after authorities warned that fighting was likely to engulf the city in less than two weeks.

Matthew Savill, director of military science at the London-based defence think tank RUSI, said it was too early to say whether Ukraine's attack on Kursk was a brilliant stratagem that caught the Russians off guard or a catastrophic mistake that would ultimately wipe out their best forces. Russian media reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ordered his generals to withdraw Ukrainian troops by October 1.

Savill estimated that Kyiv has deployed about 8,000 battle-hardened troops from 12 brigades. Some units were reportedly moved from parts of the front line in the east, where Ukraine is under heavy Russian pressure.

“It's not a major counter-offensive, nor is it a raid. It's somewhere in between,” Savill said. “The Kursk operation is good for Ukrainian morale, it changes the situation and it brings tactical advantages.” But he warned: “It has had no significant operational impact on Russia's wider campaign. And Ukraine cannot afford to suffer casualties.”

Savill said Zelenskiy's decision not to inform the White House and the British government was understandable. The failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023 was partly due to leaks, he said, adding: “I think the Ukrainians wanted to present their latest operation as a fait accompli. It changes the debate about escalation and the use of [western] Long-range weapons.”

On Tuesday, Ukraine's parliament voted to ban the Russia-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which it accuses of siding with Moscow. The church is linked to the Orthodox Church of Russia, which has supported and blessed Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Zelensky said the ban would strengthen his country's “spiritual independence.” Russia condemned it as “illegal.” The Russian church is angry over a schism in 2019 that led to the creation of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox church spiritually loyal to the Istanbul-based rival Patriarch Bartholomew of Moscow.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin said it had summoned a senior US diplomat to protest against the “provocative actions” of American journalists who had travelled with Ukrainian forces to the Ukrainian-occupied Russian territory of Sudzha. Apparently, the journalists were from the Washington Post and CNN.

The Russian Foreign Ministry claimed that the US reporters had “illegally entered the Kursk region to spread propaganda about the crimes of the Kiev regime.”