Ukraine's top military commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, said on August 16 that Kyiv's forces continue to advance in the Kursk region.
"The troops of the offensive group continue to fight, they have advanced in some directions from 1 to 3 kilometers toward the enemy. In general, the situation is under control. All measures are being carried out according to the plan," he said in a briefing with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy over video link.
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Syrskiy reported fighting in the area of Malaya Loknya, some 11.5 kilometers from Ukrainian border.
The claims could not be independently verified.
Ukrainian forces also destroyed a key bridge in the Kursk region on August 16, pro-Kremlin media outlets report. According to Russian security officials, the destruction of the bridge cut off part of a local district making it more difficult for civilian evacuation out of the region.
Ukrainian troops launched the cross-border incursion on August 6 in an apparent attempt to divert the Russian military forces away from the front line. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned on August 15 that Pokrovsk and other nearby towns in the Donetsk region of Ukraine were "facing the most intense Russian assaults."
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military, reporting on the situation within Ukraine, said the number of clashes on the front increased to 99 by the end of the day on August 16, and many of them were in the Pokrovsk area.
Military authorities in the city of Pokrovsk urged civilians to speed up their evacuation because Russian troops are "advancing at a fast pace." They said on Telegram that with every passing day "there is less and less time to collect personal belongings and leave for safer regions.”
Ukrainian forces fought battles in other areas, including Kupyansk, Kramatorsk, and Siverskiy, the General Staff said.
In addition to Pokrovsk, the enemy attacked in nine other areas, including in Kharkiv, the General Staff said, noting that some battles there also were ongoing.
Ukraine's human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, told RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service on August 16 that Kyiv will not create special camps for Russian civilians who want to evacuate amid an ongoing incursion in Russia's Kursk and Belgorod regions.
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Ukraine Says Ready To Take Russian Refugees From Kursk
The Ukrainian government said its advance was meant to establish a "security zone" inside Russia to put an end to incessant strikes by the Russian military from the two regions bordering Ukraine targeting civilian and infrastructure facilities.
Lubinets said that he did not envisage any threats to the security of the civilian population from the Russian region on the territory of Ukraine and that he thinks the number of civilians willing to evacuate to Ukraine will be limited.
"We do not expect that there will be a large number of people willing to come to us, if any. But I am definitely not worried about the fact that it will be dangerous for the civilian population from Kursk region.... We have offered each and every resident of Kursk the option to evacuate from this territory if they wish," Lubinets said.
"Ukraine will open humanitarian corridors. Either to the territory controlled by the Russian Federation, or to the territory of independent Ukraine. It should be the personal choice of any citizen who is currently there from among the civilians. We are definitely not going to violate their rights."
Lubinets has said the Ukrainian military strictly adheres to the obligations stipulated by the Geneva and Hague Conventions.
Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said Ukraine has set up storage facilities in the Sumy region for humanitarian aid meant for Russian civilians.
He didn't specify how many of the storage facilities had been set up or where they are, but a video on the ministry's Telegram account showed a large inflatable tent and Ukrainian military personnel carrying parcels and packing food.
During a trip to the Sumy region, which borders Russia's Kursk region, Klymenko said about 150 food parcels had been sent to civilians in the area. Citizens "abandoned by Russia" are mostly elderly people, people with disabilities, and families with children, he said, adding that they need food, water, and medicine."
The approach contrasts with the treatment that some Ukrainians who fled their homes said they were subjected to. They reported being forced to undergo "filtration" -- Moscow's alleged campaign to catch and punish perceived enemies or others deemed somehow unreliable from among the war's refugees. There also have been accusations that Ukrainians ensnared in the occupation forces' vetting were killed, "disappeared," or forcibly deported to Siberia and other Russian destinations.
Moscow has denied committing atrocities and routinely blames Ukrainian forces for civilian deaths and other abuses in a war that Russian censorship prohibits from being described as a "war" at all.
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Analyst: Ukraine Seeks 'Strategic Shift' In Kursk
On August 15, Russian presidential aide and Security Council head Nikolai Patrushev told the Izvestia newspaper that the Ukrainian incursion into Russia's western Kursk region launched on August 6 was "planned with the help of NATO and Western special services," repeating a claim made by numerous Russian officials in recent days.
Patrushev said assertions by the United States and other Western countries that they were not involved "are not true."
In a reaction to the events in Kursk and Belgorod regions, the supreme commander of NATO forces in Europe, U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, said Russia's reaction to the Ukrainian advance into its territory had so far been sluggish and messy.
"Russia is still trying to pull together a response to Ukraine's incursion. So far, it has only been a rather slow and scattered reaction. This is partly because Russia hasn't established who has the authority. The Ministry of Defense is responsible for military actions inside Ukraine, but not within Russia, right? So, it should be the Ministry of Internal Affairs," Cavoli said at an event at the Council on Foreign Relations on August 15.