Ukraine war briefing: Second night of Moscow drone raids, Kursk substation hit

Ukraine has launched drones at Moscow for the second night in a row, forcing closure of the capital’s three major airports, Russian officials said early on Wednesday. The mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, said six Ukrainian drones approached Moscow and what he claimed was debris from an intercepted drone fell over one of the key highways leading into the city. Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsia, said it halted flights at airports serving Moscow including Vnukovo, Domodedovo and Zhukovsky.

Ukrainian forces attacked a power substation at the town of Rylsk in Russia’s western Kursk region, the regional governor said early on Tuesday, after Russian war bloggers reported Ukrainian forces firing missiles had smashed through the border in Kursk, crossing minefields with armoured vehicles. The Kursk governor, Alexander Khinshtein, said two people were injured in the substation attack, while two transformers were damaged and power cut.

The Russian military blog Rybar said Ukrainian units were trying to advance in Kursk near the settlements of Tyotkino and Glushkovo. The Ukrainian military said its forces had struck a Russian drone command unit near Tyotkino on Sunday. Russia said Ukrainian attacks on its border area near the Sumy region killed three people. Ukrainian prosecutors said on Monday that Russian forces had subjected two settlements in the Sumy region bordering Kursk – Bilopillya and Vorozhba – to artillery fire and guided bomb attacks, killing three residents and injuring four. Local officials ordered evacuations in part of Sumy across from the fighting in Kursk.

The Ukrainian commander-in-chief, Gen Oleksandr Syrsky, said on Monday that the Kursk offensive had “achieved most of its goals”, showing Ukraine’s military capabilities and preventing Russia from launching offensives elsewhere on the frontline. In recent weeks, Russia claimed to have quashed Ukraine’s Kursk incursion, but Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, says Kyiv’s forces continue to operate there and in the adjacent Russian region of Belgorod.

A Czech-led ammunition initiative has supplied Ukraine with half a million large-calibre rounds already since the start of the year, the Czech Republic’s prime minister, Petr Fiala, said on Monday after meeting Zelenskyy in Prague.

A Russian reporter critical of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has fled to France and told how Reporters Without Borders helped coordinate her escape. Speaking in an interview with Agence France-Presse in Paris, Ekaterina Barabash, 64, said: “Russian prison, it’s not a life. It is worse than death.” Barabash was arrested in February on allegations of spreading “false information” about the Russian armed forces in several posts she made on social media. She fled house arrest in April and made a “very difficult” journey to France taking about two and a half weeks. She removed her electronic bracelet when she fled house arrest – “it’s somewhere in the Russian forest.”