Ukrainian troops have destroyed another key bridge in the Kursk region, as they continue their campaign inside Russia.
Kyiv launched a devastating attack on Russia on August 6, storming through Russian defences and advancing quickly into enemy territory.
Volodymyr Zelensky‘s troops have since seized more than 400 square miles of Russian territory and have taken hundreds of prisoners.
They have also methodically set about destroying key transport infrastructure in the region, as they look to consolidate their gains.
On Sunday, Ukraine‘s Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk published a video to his Telegram channel showing what he described as a “precise” air strike on the structure he identified as a bridge.
He added: “Minus one more bridge!”
The Russian Telegram Channel Mash said Ukrainian troops had hit a bridge over the Seim River, near the village of Zvannoye.
It also claimed US-supplied HIMARS missiles were used in the attack, although there has been no official confirmation of this.
This is the second major bridge destroyed by Ukrainian forces in recent days and will further hinder Russia‘s ability to resupply troops hoping to fend off Ukraine‘s incursion.
Another over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky District in Russia‘s Kursk Oblast was hit on August 16, according to Alexey Smirnov, the region’s acting governor.
Mash reported that there is now only one remaining usable bridge in the area.
Though Ukraine has not spelled out its intentions, knocking out the three bridges would complicate Russian reinforcement of a pocket of land to the west of the current incursion area and improve Ukraine’s prospects of seizing it if its progress continues.
A Ukrainian official has hinted that the current incursion is far from over and that more military developments are to come.
Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, told the Guardian: “We see only part of this operation, in the future we will see several stages.”
He added that the incursion was “not like previous raids” from Ukraine into Belgorod region to the east of the country.
The official also claimed that Ukraine was taking as many as 150 prisoners per day at times, and that the majority of the Russian forces in the region were conscripts who didn’t want to fight.
