MOSCOW (Reuters) -Kyiv forces attacked a power substation in Russia’s western Kursk region, the regional governor said on Tuesday, after Russian war bloggers reported a new Ukrainian land-based incursion into the area backed by armoured vehicles and drones.
Power was yet to be restored to the town of Rylsk, a town of about 15,000 people about 50 km (30 miles) from the border with Ukraine, after Ukrainian forces struck the substation there late on Monday, damaging two transformers and injuring two teenagers, Kursk Governor Alexander Khinshtein said.
“Dear residents, the enemy, in its agony, is continuing to launch strikes against our territory,” Khinshtein said on the Telegram messaging app.
Authorities were evacuating residents from areas near the border as Ukrainian drone attacks over the past day became “more frequent”, the administration of the Kursk region said on Telegram early on Tuesday.
Russian war bloggers reported that Ukrainian forces attacked the Kursk region on Monday, firing missiles, smashing through the border and crossing minefields with special vehicles.
“The enemy blew up bridges with rockets at night and launched an attack with armoured groups in the morning,” Russian war blogger “RVvoenkor” said on Telegram on Monday.
“The mine clearance vehicles began to make passages in the minefields, followed by armoured vehicles with troops. There is a heavy battle going on at the border.”
Popular Russian military blog Rybar said on Tuesday that the advance of Ukrainian near the settlement of Tyotkino in Kursk region over the border was unsuccessful.
Ukraine made a surprise offensive into Kursk in August 2024, hoping to shift the momentum as Kremlin forces gained the upper hand after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
Kyiv also hoped its position in Kursk would draw Russian troops away from other parts of Ukraine and give it a bargaining chip with Moscow.
But Russia’s top general said last month that Ukrainian troops had been ejected from Kursk, ending the biggest incursion into Russian territory since World War Two, and that Russia was carving out a buffer zone in the Ukrainian region of Sumy.
Kyiv has not acknowledged that its troops were forced out. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Kyiv’s forces continue to operate in Kursk and in the adjacent Russian region of Belgorod.
The head of Glushkovo district in Kursk near the border with Ukraine, Pavel Zolotaryov, wrote on Telegram that residents of several localities were being evacuated to safer areas.
“Over the past 24 hours, there has been an increase in attacks by enemy drones,” Zolotaryov wrote. “There have been instances of people being killed or wounded, of houses and sites of civil infrastructure being destroyed.”
Zolotaryov did not provide evidence or further detail about the casualties. Reuters could not independently verify the report.
Ukrainian officials did not comment on any advances on Monday but prosecutors said Russian shelling and guided bomb attacks during the day killed at least three people and injured others in border villages in the Sumy region.
On Tuesday, the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in its daily update only that fighting continued along the Kursk section of the frontline, with Kyiv forces repelling 18 enemy attacks there.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last week declared a three-day ceasefire over May 8-10 to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union and its allies over Nazi Germany in World War Two.
Zelenskiy said such a measure is pointless and has called instead for an unconditional ceasefire over at least 30 days in line with a U.S. proposal launched in March.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge, William Maclean, Toby Chopra, Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast.)
