Russia and Ukraine report gains as some Ukrainians flee strategic city
PHOTO CAPTION: A Ukrainian serviceman of the 118th Separate Mechanized Brigade rides atop of a T-72 tank during military exercises near a front line, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine July 21, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer
By Tom Balmforth and Olena Harmash
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia and Ukraine both reported new battlefield gains on Thursday, with Kyiv hailing the capture of another village on Russian soil but hundreds of Ukrainians fleeing the eastern city of Pokrovsk as Russian forces advance on it.
Visiting the border area from where his troops entered the Kursk region in western Russia on Aug. 6, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced the seizure of a new village that he did not name, and said the incursion had helped reduce Russian shelling of the northeastern Sumy region.
Russian authorities said a Russian ferry sank after a Ukrainian attack that struck southern Russia's Port Kavkaz, which supplies fuel to the occupied peninsula of Crimea. Kyiv said it had mounted a drone strike on an air base in southern Russia and carried out a raid about 240 km (150 miles) from the site of its push into Kursk region.
After returning to Kyiv, Zelenskiy said the latest Ukrainian military action was part of an effort to put an end to the war on Ukraine's terms instead of Russia's.
"This is all our systematic defence path, the path to end this war on the terms of an independent Ukraine," he said in an address to veterans.
He said that to force Russian troops out of Ukrainian territory, the Ukrainian military should "create as many problems as possible" on Russian territory.
But although the incursion is an embarrassment for Russia, Moscow's forces have continued their gradual advances of the past few months against tired Ukrainian troops in eastern Ukraine worn down by 2-1/2 years of heavy fighting.
Moscow said its troops had taken control of the village of Mezhove in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, and that they had beaten back an attempt by a Ukrainian force to infiltrate its border in a different region to Kyiv's Aug. 6 incursion.
Ukrainian authorities say Russian troops are now just 10 km (six miles) outside Pokrovsk, an important transport hub in eastern Ukraine, and this week started evacuating elderly residents and children.
"Everyone is in panic, people are running away," Liudmyla Sydorenko told Reuters on Thursday as she packed a 94-year-old relative's belongings into plastic bags at their apartment so that she could be evacuated.
"I went outside and was shocked: people with paper boxes there, mass evacuation. We don't want to leave, but we have to. We thought we could stay here. It's very difficult."
Moscow's capture of Pokrovsk, which lies at an intersection of roads and a railway line, would give Russia options to advance in new directions and also cut supply routes used by the Ukrainian military in the Donetsk region.
WARNING BY U.S. EMBASSY
Authorities in Kursk said they had begun installing concrete shelters to help protect civilians during the Ukrainian incursion.
President Vladimir Putin accused Ukraine of trying to strike Russia's Kursk nuclear power plant in an overnight attack and said Moscow had informed the U.N. nuclear safety watchdog about the situation.
But he provided no documentary evidence to back up his assertion and there was no immediate comment from Ukraine.
Reuters was unable to independently confirm the attack or reports from the battlefield.
Ukraine has closely guarded its main aims in the Kursk region but said it has carved out a buffer zone from an area that Russia has used to pound targets in Ukraine with cross-border strikes.
Military analysts say the incursion probably aims in part to divert Russian forces to ease pressure in the east, although there is no indication Russia has pulled troops from there.
The incursion has boosted morale among Ukrainians as they prepare to mark 33 years since independence from the Soviet Union on Saturday.
The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, however, said there was a heightened risk of Russian missile and drone attacks throughout Ukraine in the coming days connected to Independence Day.
(Reporting by Reuters bureaus and by Ivan Lyubysh-Kirdey in Pokrovsk, Writing by Angus MacSwan, Editing by Timothy Heritage)
