President Volodomyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces have captured another Russian village while visiting the border where his troops crossed into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, while Moscow said its ground forces have taken control of a village in eastern Ukraine.
Kyiv has also reported carrying out a drone strike on an air base in southern Russia, but Russia said it had pushed back an effort by Ukrainian forces to cross the border in an area 150 miles from the site of Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk on Aug. 6, Reuters reported.
Kyiv has announced that its ground forces have won a series of battles since the advance into Kursk, but Russian forces have been slowly but steadily moving farther into eastern Ukraine for months.
On Thursday, the Russian defense ministry said forces had seized the village of Mezhove in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Reuters could not independently confirm the latest battlefield reports from Kyiv or Moscow. Russia has repeatedly said its forces have stopped the Ukrainian incursion, but Kyiv has kept saying that its troops are making more advances into Russia.
Zelenskyy said in a statement, there had been less shelling and civilian casualties in Ukraine’s Sumy region since the Kursk operation. He also said Ukrainian forces captured one more Russian village, after Ukrainian officials said Kyiv controls more than 90 settlements in Kursk.
A security source in Kyiv said Ukraine had also carried out a drone attack on Russia’s Marinovka military airfield in Volgograd in southern Russia, hitting a storage site for fuel and glide bombs.
Russia’s defense ministry said it had shot down 28 drones over Russian territory.
The Ukrainian military’s general staff said Russian troops carried out 53 attacks and offensive actions on the front to the east of the transport hub of Pokrovsk in the last 24 hours.
The Ukrainian navy said its forces attacked a Russian ammunition and fuel storage site on the Moscow-held Kinburn Spit that juts out into the Black Sea in occupied southern Ukraine.
Price Action: Defense stocks moved upward during Thursday’s late-morning trading session.
Exchange-traded funds that track defense stocks also saw gains at the time of publication Thursday.
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