Ukraine strikes airfield near Volgograd as Russia presses forward in Donetsk

Ukraine has carried out a night-time drone attack on a Kremlin military airfield near the city of Volgograd and announced the capture of another village in Russia’s Kursk region, as Russian forces pressed on with their advance in the Donetsk region.

Volgograd’s governor, Andrei Bocharov, said the strike took place at around 3am. Residents reported a series of explosions. Several hours later ammunition continued to detonate, as a vast carpet of black smoke engulfed the area.

Ukraine’s SBU security service said it carried out the remote raid against the Marinovka airbase, 70km west of Volgograd, near the city of Kalach-na-Donu. The base is home to around 30 Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets.

The planes carry out regular bombing runs against Ukrainian positions on the frontline, about 450kms away, the SBU told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. It is unclear how many jets were damaged or destroyed.

One Russian eyewitness filming the destruction suggested the airfield had been wiped out. “It’s a serious tragedy, folks. This is serious stuff. It’s all fucking on fire. And it’s fucking smoke. It’s all fucking exploding. That’s it,” he said, as detonations continued.

Ukraine is waging an increasingly ambitious long-range drone campaign against critical Russian infrastructure targets, hitting more than 200. They include oil depots, refineries and arms factories. Last week it struck two airbases: Borisoglebsk, 150 miles inside Russia, and Savasleyka, about 400 miles away.

On Tuesday it launched a major attack on Moscow and sent drones to the Arctic Murmansk region, more than 1,000 miles away, where Russian strategic bombers are located. Russia’s defence ministry said it downed all hostile unmanned aerial vehicles that infiltrated its territory.

Earlier on Thursday, drones hit a railway ferry with fuel tanks in the port of Kavkaz, not far from the road and rail bridge linking the Russian mainland with occupied Crimea. Black smoke billowed above the water. Kyiv has said it will knock out the “illegal” crossing across the Kerch Strait.

The latest drone strikes came as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy travelled to the border area in Sumy province, from where Ukrainian troops sprang their surprise 6 August incursion deep into Russia. Zelenskiy met his commander-in-chief, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi.

One goal of the operation is to relieve pressure on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, where Russian combat units have been pressing forward. So far, this has not happened, with Moscow instead sending reinforcements from the rear and the occupied south of Ukraine. It anything, it has stepped up the tempo of attack around the town of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian military hub.

In recent months Russian forces have swallowed up villages to the east of Pokrovsk and are now a mere 11kms away. They have advanced to within 5kms of the neighbouring town of Myrnohrad. Residents on Thursday were packing up to leave, with shops, banks, and other organisations closing down this week. The mood was said to be calm despite a Russian assault expected imminently.

Speaking in the Sumy area, Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian-controlled “buffer zone” on the Russian side of the border was saving lives. “Since the start of the Kursk operation, there has been less shelling and fewer civilian casualties in the Sumy region,” he said. The armed forces had seized another settlement, he added, and taken more Russian soldiers as prisoners.

According to Telegram channels, Ukrainian soldiers have captured the village of Krasno-Oktyabrskoye, next to the River Seym. They previously destroyed three bridges and two pontoon crossings on the same stretch of frontline, using US-supplied Himars rockets, and pounded the Russian border town of Tetkino, further west.

Several thousand Russian troops are now marooned in the Glushkovsky district south of the river. Ukraine is seeking to advance there and to increase its 1,250 sq km bridgehead inside enemy territory. Video suggests Russian units are putting up strong resistance, with fierce battles in the town of Korenevo and elsewhere.

Russia’s FSB spy agency, meanwhile, has issued an arrest warrant for journalists working for CNN, after they travelled on assignment to the Russian town of Sudzha, which is under the control of Ukraine’s military. The reporters include Nick Paton-Walsh, CNN’s chief international security correspondent, and two Ukrainian colleagues. Paton-Walsh, who is British, was the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent in the early 2000s.

Earlier this week the Kremlin summoned a senior US diplomat in Moscow and complained about “provocative” trips by American journalists to Russian territory.

Overall, Vladimir Putin has downplayed Ukraine’s invasion – the first attack on Russia soil since the second world war. In a meeting with the heads of the affected border regions, he discussed the humanitarian situation without explaining what caused it. More than 122,000 Russians living in the Kursk zone have fled.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Zelenskiy’s office, said the Kremlin had deliberately chosen to ignore bad news. “It is currently unable to counter the actions of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region. To quell the growing anxiety among the population, our army’s advance and the loss of territory is being presented as a ‘new normal’,” he wrote on X.