A wave of Ukrainian drone strikes targeted Russia’s Voronezh, Kursk, Savasleyka and Borisoglebsk airbases, where warplanes take off to drop glide bombs on Ukraine. Ukraine also claimed on Wednesday to have shot down a Russian Su-34 jet in the Kursk region where it said it had also captured 100 Russian prisoners.
Ukraine’s interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said the Kursk operation was creating a buffer zone “to protect our border communities from daily enemy attacks”. Apart from Kursk being invaded, Russia’s Belgorod region has also declared a state of emergency because of Ukrainian attacks.
The Ukrainian leadership’s long-term plans for the Kursk incursion are unclear, but the longer it lasts, the harder it is for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to brush it off, while the Russian elite will be watching to see if he can come out on top, Shaun Walker, the Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent, writes. Ekaterina Schulmann, from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, says: “What I suspect they are watching for is this: is the power still strong? Does the old man still have it in him?”
Ukrainian deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said Ukraine would open humanitarian corridors for evacuating civilians towards both Russia and Ukraine. Ukrainian officials also promised access for international humanitarian organisations, likely to include the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said he met top officials to discuss the humanitarian situation and establishing a military commandant’s office “if needed” in an occupied area that Kyiv says exceeds 1,000 sq km (390 sq miles).
Ukraine’s top commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russian town of Sudzha, a transshipment hub for Russian natural gas flowing to Europe via Ukraine, was fully under Ukrainian control with gas was still flowing. “However, Ukraine has no intention of claiming someone else’s land,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said. The Russian rouble fell further against the dollar on Wednesday, for a loss of over 8% since the incursion began.
Ukraine’s ombudsman, Dmytro Lubinets, said he had discussed the Russian prisoners taken in the Kursk region with his Russian counterpart. “I see that this situation at least forced the initiative from the Russian side,” he told national TV.
The heaviest fighting of the war remains in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, and Zelenskiy said his forces there would receive more weapons than originally planned from the next western support package.
Russian drones attacked a medical battalion vehicle in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, killing a medic and wounding other people, regional authorities said. The attack reportedly took place in the settlement of Bilyy Kolodiaz.
A Russian ballistic missile hit port infrastructure in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa on Wednesday evening, injuring a port employee and a grain carrier driver, Ukrainian officials said. Russian pulled out of a UN-brokered deal that guaranteed safe export of Ukrainian grain to guard against world hunger. Ukraine has since established its own maritime corridor for shipments.
China’s special envoy for Eurasian affairs had a phone call with Pope Francis’s Ukraine peace envoy on Wednesday to discuss the current situation in the Russia-Ukraine war, China’s foreign ministry said.
Mali’s Tuareg rebel alliance has said it received no external assistance from Ukraine or anywhere else in recent fighting said to have killed at least 84 Russian Wagner mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers. Mali and Niger said they were cutting diplomatic ties with Ukraine comments from Ukrainian military intelligence suggested Ukraine had helped the rebels. Ukraine’s foreign ministry said this was hasty and no evidence had been provided to show a Ukrainian role. Mohamed Elmaouloud Ramadane of the (CSP-PSD) rebel alliance, told Reuters on Wednesday: “We can clearly say that we received no outside help for the fighting at Tinzaouaten … No, we have not received any assistance from Ukraine.”