Houses in the Kursk region village of Sudzha, following a Ukrainian attack, 6 August 2024. Photo: Telegram, Alexey Smirnov

The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have gained a foothold inside Russian territory for the first time since the war began, having made a cross-border incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region on Tuesday, Russian pro-war Telegram channel Rybar reported on Wednesday.

The AFU are now in control of the Russian border villages of Nikolaevo-Daryino, Daryino, and Sverdlikovo, while fighting is ongoing for control of the settlements of Goncharovka and Oleshna, according to Rybar.

The operation appeared to have been “planned for a long time” and involved some 400 Ukrainian troops, with up to another 2,000 troops concentrated along the border, Rybar said, adding that it expected the AFU to attempt to “expand their area of control further” over the coming days.

Russian independent news outlet Pepel published drone footage appearing to show at least six Russian soldiers being taken prisoner by Ukrainian forces, with other videos circulated by Ukrainian Telegram channels showing at least two Russian men who said they were conscripts captured by the AFU in the region.

Photo: Rybar

The Kursk regional authorities reported that two people were killed when a drone hit an ambulance on Tuesday evening as AFU incursions into the region continued overnight.

The region’s acting governor, Alexey Smirnov, said that an ambulance driver and a paramedic had been killed and a doctor had been injured when a drone launched by what he called “Ukrainian Nazis” hit the vehicle near the border town of Sudzha, which was the scene of intense battles between the AFU and Russian Armed Forces on Tuesday, and from which residents are reportedly continuing to evacuate.

On Wednesday morning, Smirnov called on local residents to give blood “due to the situation in the border areas of the region”, which he said continued to “heroically resist attacks by Ukrainian Nazis”.

However, the regional authorities were forced to deny that Smirnov had called on fighting-age men to report to their local military draft office amid the worsening situation on the border, saying that a video showing him urging residents to “collect weapons and defend our homeland”, which circulated on Monday, had been a deepfake.

In its daily report, Russia’s Defence Ministry reported that it had downed four drones over the Kursk region, as well as three over the Belgorod region and two each over the Rostov and Voronezh regions, but made no mention of AFU advances into Russian territory.