The commander of Ukraine’s air force says a second bridge in Russia’s Kursk region has been struck as Kyiv tries to weaken Russia’s combat operations in the area.
“Minus one more bridge,” Air Force Commander Mykola Oleschuk wrote on Telegram on August 18. “The air force continues to deprive the enemy of logistical capabilities with precise air strikes, which significantly affect the course of hostilities.”
Moscow has not yet commented on the strike, which came nearly two weeks into Ukraine's surprise counteroffensive into Russia’s Kursk region, altering the dynamics of the two-and-a-half-year war and causing 120,000 people to flee.
Russian military bloggers previously posted an image of the first bridge that was hit. It spans the Seym River near the village of Zvannoye in Kursk.
According to Russian security officials, the destruction of that bridge cut off part of the Glushkov district, making it more difficult for the civilian evacuation out of the region.
On August 16, the Russian Foreign Ministry accused Ukraine of using American long-range rockets to destroy a key bridge in the Glushkov district in the Kursk region, killing in the process "volunteers" helping to evacuate civilians.
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Analyst: Ukraine Seeks 'Strategic Shift' In Kursk
Analysts say taking out bridges over the Seym is crucial for Ukraine to ensure a secure flank to its offensive in Kursk by making it difficult for Moscow to supply its troops south of the river.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian operation in Kursk "is still inflicting losses on the Russian Army and the Russian state, their defense industry, and their economy."
He said in his evening address on August 18 that his top military commander, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskiy, told him that the situation at the front is showing "good results" in all directions.
In addition, he said there were "good and necessary results in the destruction of Russian equipment near Toretsk," a town in the Donetsk region north of the regional capital.
Ukraine's main task now is "to destroy as much Russian potential as possible and conduct maximum counterattack work." This "also applies to the creation of a "buffer zone" thanks to the operation in the Kursk region, he added.
Aleksei Kulemzin, the Russian-appointed mayor of the occupied city of Donetsk, said a man and a woman were killed by Ukrainian shelling on August 18, according to Reuters. The claim could not be independently verified and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Fighting elsewhere in the Donetsk region prompted Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukrainian deputy prime minister and minister of reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories, to urge citizens of Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and Selydove to evacuate.
"The situation remains difficult in the Pokrovsk area. Therefore, I appeal to the residents of settlements in the immediate vicinity of the front line...please evacuate. If you are not involved in the defense of settlements, then you should leave for safer regions," Vereshchuk said.
In Russia, debris from a drone downed in the Rostov region caused a fire at a diesel fuel storage facility in an industrial warehouse in the early hours of August 18, regional Governor Vasily Golubev wrote on Telegram.
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He said firefighting units were putting out the fire in the Proletarsk district and added that there were no casualties.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian military said its forces hit a facility in the Rostov region where oil and oil-products used by the Russian military are stored. At least two fires have been recorded on the territory of the facility, the General Staff said.
In Ukraine, authorities in the Kharkiv region said a 52-year-old woman was injured in Kupyansk as a result of shelling by the Russian Army. Private homes were also damaged, the local prosecutor-general's office said.
In addition, a nearby village was shelled, damaging equipment belonging to a utility company. There were no casualties, the press service of the prosecutor-general's office said.
According to preliminary data, the Russian Army used rocket-propelled grenades in the attack.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses had intercepted five Ukrainian drones overnight over Belgorod, Kursk, and Rostov. Kyiv does not usually comment on reports of drone attacks.
Meanwhile, the head of Kyiv’s military administration, Serhiy Popko, said on August 18 that Russia had launched its third ballistic missile against the Ukrainian capital this month.
He added that Russian forces had then launched a cruise missile toward Kyiv.
Popko said on Telegram that the Russians had likely used a KN-23-type North Korean ballistic missile to target the Ukrainian capital.
The head of Kyiv's regional military administration, Ruslan Kravchenko, said two private houses were destroyed in the attack and dozens of other homes were damaged. There were no injuries reported, he said.
Ukraine's air force said earlier that it had downed eight drones and five missiles in total over the Kyiv, Sumy, and Poltava regions.