Ukraine says it used US weapons to attack Russian pontoon bridge – Euractiv

Ukraine said on Wednesday it had used U.S.-made weapons to destroy a Russian pontoon bridge to defend its invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, while Moscow said its troops had blocked Kiev’s advance there and made gains in eastern Ukraine.

Kiev has claimed a string of battlefield victories since its surprise entry into the Kursk region on August 6. Moscow has steadily advanced into eastern Ukraine, putting pressure on troops exhausted by two and a half years of fighting.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country’s military was stepping up its presence in the region around Pokrovsk, a focal point of Russia’s advance in eastern Ukraine, in response to the Russian offensive.

In a regular televised address, he also urged Kiev’s allies to fulfill their promises to supply ammunition to Ukraine’s armed forces. “This is vital for national defense,” he said.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a close Ukrainian ally, said he expected Kiev’s action in the Kursk region to be “a very limited operation in space and time,” adding that Berlin had not been consulted beforehand.

Ukraine has been closely guarding its overall objectives in the Kursk region but says it has created a buffer zone in an area used by Russia for cross-border attacks on Ukrainian targets.

Video footage released by Ukrainian special forces showed several pontoon bridges in the Kursk region being attacked, and Russian reports said Ukraine had destroyed at least three bridges over the Seim River as it tried to hold on to captured territory.

“Where did the Russian pontoon bridges in the Kursk region ‘disappear’? The operators … destroyed them with great accuracy,” Ukrainian special forces said on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said Kiev had seized more territory in the Kursk region this year than Moscow had taken in Ukraine. Russia called the incursion an escalation.

Ukraine breached the Russian border in the Kursk region on August 6 in an attempt to force Moscow to redeploy troops from other fronts, but Russian forces have continued to advance in recent days.

Russia has captured the settlement of Zhelany, less than 20 kilometers east of the transport hub of Pokrovsk, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Both sides reported massive drone attacks: Ukraine said it intercepted 50 of 69 drones launched by Russia, while Moscow said its air defenses destroyed 45 drones in Russia, including 11 in the Moscow region.

Major General Apti Alauddinov, commander of the Chechen Akhmat special forces and deputy director of the political department of the Ministry of Defense’s military, reported to Moscow that Russia had prevented the Ukrainian invasion.

“We stopped them and began to push them back,” Araudinov told Russian state television. He said Ukrainian forces were reorganizing and could launch a new offensive soon, but he gave no further details.

Russia has repeatedly said the Ukrainian offensive has stopped. Ukraine has been boasting of its progress, saying it has captured 92 settlements covering more than 1,250 square kilometers.

The invasion was a major morale boost for Ukrainian troops, who have not made significant gains on their own soil since late 2022.

Roman Kostenko, secretary of the Ukrainian parliament’s defense committee, said that despite the Russian invasion, its priority remained to capture the Donetsk region and that Russia would not send reinforcements from around Pokrovsk.

“It is true that the enemy has started to transfer some troops… but their primary position is not to withdraw troops from the Pokrovsk direction,” Espreso.TV media quoted him as saying.

Logistics strike

Mykola Bileskov, a researcher at the Ukrainian Institute for National Strategic Studies, a Kyiv think tank, said the attack on bridges and pontoon bridges would help Ukraine establish a defense line along the river.

“This is an opportunity to make it more stable, more systematic and ready to repel a Russian attack,” he said in a speech on state television.

Reuters confirmed that all of the pontoon bridges shown in the video being attacked were located on or along the Seym River in the Kursk region.

The video also showed drone strikes on military trucks and other locations in the area described as Russian arms depots and electronic warfare complexes. The other locations or the date the video was taken could not be independently verified.

Separately, Reuters confirmed that at least one pontoon bridge had apparently been destroyed.

The monument was most likely erected between August 14 and 17 between the Russian settlements of Zvannoe and Glushkovo, after two bridges were destroyed or damaged.

Satellite images show that the crossing point, about 14 kilometers from the border, was closed on August 19. Smoke was also visible in images taken from the area that day.

The Ukrainian statement said the U.S.-made HIMARS rocket system had been used in an operation to disrupt Russian logistics in the Kursk region, the first time Kiev has acknowledged in an official statement that the weapon was used during the invasion.

Washington has not commented directly on the use of US-made weapons in the Kursk region but has said US policy has not changed and that Ukraine is defending itself against an ongoing, full-scale Russian aggression.

Although allies have banned Ukraine from using Western weapons for long-range strikes inside Russia, they have allowed Kiev to use them to attack border areas since Russia launched a new offensive against the Kharkiv region this spring.

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