Ukrainian forces have captured a garrison town as they opened a new front in the southern Russian region of Kursk.
Combat engineers breached Russian defences along the border last week as Moscow mounted its first significant attempt to claw back territory seized by Kyiv in its surprise incursion.
The fresh offensive is about 20 miles west of the 820-square kilometre area that Western officials last week said Ukraine was successfully occupying.
Soon after breaking across the frontier, Ukrainian troops advanced several miles beyond the village of Novyi Put, where they entered the Glushkovsky district of Kursk.
Ukrainian tanks rolled up to the southern outskirts of the Russian garrison town of Veseloe, about three miles north of the Ukrainian border.
The Ukrainian Centre for Defence Strategies said in a report on Sunday that Kyiv’s forces had “practically taken control of it”.
On Sunday, the Ukrainian Khorne Group shared footage on social media of a purported strike on a Russian military base using a US-provided JDAM satellite-guided bomb.
“Bring us more conscripts and paratroopers,” Khorne wrote on its channel on the Telegram messaging app.
“We are observing all of you.”
Russia had stationed a large number of poorly trained conscripts in Veseloe, the Forbes news website reported.
The Kremlin usually uses garrison towns like this to host young men undertaking a year-long military service who are not meant to see combat.
Moscow initially relied on border guards and conscripts to see off the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk – the first foreign invasion of Russian soil since the Second World War.
Better trained and more capable units were soon introduced by Russian commanders in an attempt to blunt any Ukrainian advances.
But if Ukraine continues to advance beyond Veseloe, the manoeuvre “posed a threat of encirclement for the enemy’s tactical group (up to 8,000 military personnel)”, which are fighting nearby, according to the Ukrainian Centre for Defence Strategies.
Moscow last week launched a counter-offensive along Ukraine’s western flank, notably reclaiming control over the village of Snagost.
Russian sources claimed that the Kremlin’s forces had retaken as much as 150 square kilometres from Ukrainian forces.
A senior Ukrainian military intelligence official, cited in a report by the FT, said Russia had moved about 38,000 troops to Kursk, including units deployed from the front lines in southern Ukraine.
President Voloymyr Zelensky publicly acknowledged the offensive last Friday, saying the assault was “going in line with our Ukrainian plan”, a possible hint to the beginning of a new push by Kyiv.
Tendar, a popular pro-Ukrainian military blogger, said Ukraine had likely waited for the Russian thrust before launching its latest operation.
“It not only forces Russians to finally commit their troops, including their reserves,” the account wrote.
“The Ukrainian operations south of Glushkovo are only backing up this assumption. The Ukrainian army obviously prepared for that gambit and are now pushing into another soft spot of the Russian defence,” it added.
Meanwhile, Russia fired 56 drones at Kyiv in an overnight barrage, which injured one person and damaged five homes.
Ukraine’s air force said it had downed 53 of the drones in a statement on Monday morning.
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