Kyiv still advancing in Kursk as Moscow opens 400 shelters amid evacuation

Two people were killed when Ukrainian forces shelled a bus with civilians in the Russian-held city of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine on Tuesday, the TASS news agency cited Russian-appointed local authorities as saying.

Russian-installed officials earlier said that more than 30 people had been wounded in the attack.

Ukrainian forces are still “advancing further” into the Russian border region of Kursk as Moscow scrambled to open hundreds of shelters amid a mass evacuation.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a Washington-based think tank, said geolocated footage showed that despite Russian claims that the cross-border assault had stabilised, Kyiv’s forces were still pushing forwards.

Russia’s emergency ministry said 400 temporary shelters across the country had been opened to house around 30,000 people forced to flee Ukraine’s offensive which began last week.

Romania’s navy carried out a controlled explosion on Tuesday of a mine that had drifted to its Black Sea shore, the defence ministry have reported.

Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey have a joint taskforce to defuse stray mines, which began floating in the Black Sea after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The ministry said the navy was alerted by local officials early on Tuesday about an unidentified object that had washed up on shore near Grindul Chituc in southeastern Romania. The area is part of the Danube Delta, which Romania shares with Ukraine.

“By examining photographs taken on site, the object is most likely an anti-landing seamine of the YaRM type,” the ministry said in a statement. The mine was detonated at around 0950 GMT, the ministry added.

The Black Sea is crucial for shipments of grain, oil and oil products and is shared by Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia and Turkey, as well as Ukraine and Russia.

Since the war started, more than 100 drifting mines have been discovered and destroyed, the Romanian navy has said.

The European Union has sent €4.2 billion (£3.6bn) in “crucial” financial aid to Ukraine, taking the total value of bloc support for Kyiv to €12 billion.

Ukrainian prime minister Denys Shmhyal expressed gratitude to the bloc for actioning the payment and announced that Kyiv has received the funds.

“This assistance is crucial to maintain our macro-financial stability, advance recovery and drive key reforms,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The United Nations’ human rights agency is concerned about the possible impact of recent military developments in the war between Russia and Ukraine, its spokesperson has said in regard to Ukraine‘s recent cross-border assault on the Kursk region.

“Wherever military operations are occurring by either side, the protection of civilians and civilian objects in accordance with international humanitarian law must be the top priority,” the spokesperson told a briefing.

The UN has unverified reports of four civilians killed, plus one male war correspondent and one female paramedic injured, she added. It has not been able to establish under what circumstances the casualties occurred.

Below you can see a map detailing Ukraine’s historic cross-border assault into the Russian region of Kursk, which began a week ago today.

Ukraine’s military chief claims his forces have taken nearly 390 square miles of territory in just seven days, nearly three times the amount of occupied land retaken by Kyiv’s troops during the three-month counteroffensive last summer.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think tank that tracks developments on the frontline, suggested a more conservative estimate of around 305 square miles.

Nonetheless, the capture of such a large swathe of territory is a significant advancement for Ukrainian troops, a feat evermore significant given it is inside Russia, as opposed to being a retake of land in Ukraine that Moscow’s forces had previously occupied.

Footage below shows the extent of eight hours of Russian strikes in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson yesterday.

The video, released by local governor Oleksandr Prokudin, details several destroyed houses.

Earlier, we reported that at least one woman was killed and ten more injured, including two young girls, throughout yesterday’s strike in the region.

Russian forces stepped up their attacks on the Pokrovsk front in eastern Ukraine over the last 24 hours, the Ukrainian military has announced, reporting the largest number of battles in the area in a single day in a week.

The increase in fighting comes after Ukraine mounted a surprise cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk regionin what some military analysts see as an attempt to divert Russian forces from their main offensives in the east.

Russian forces have been trying to advance towards the Kyiv-held logistics hub of Pokrovsk for months, inching forward incrementally and taking advantage of greater troop numbers.

In a daily readout, the Ukrainian military’s General Staff said there had been 52 battles on the Pokrovsk front, a visible increase from figures of between 28 and 42 per day that have been reported over the past week.

Ukraine last reported more than that in the first days of August, before Kyiv’s forces launched their cross-border attack into Kursk region.

The Russian attacks in the last 24 hours were focused around the villages of Hrodivka and Zhelanne, located about 20 km from Pokrovsk, the General Staff said.

The battles on the Pokrovsk front accounted for more than a third of all the battles reported along a 1,000-kilometer front, according to the Ukrainian readout.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and now controls 18 per cent of Ukrainian territory. Until the surprise attack on Russia, Ukraine had been losing territory to Russian forces.