Ukraine destroyed or damaged three bridges over the Seym River in Russia, Russian sources say

kyiv, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have destroyed or damaged all three bridges over the Seym River in western Russia, Russian sources said, as Kiev's incursion into western Russia entered its third week Tuesday.

kyiv's incursion into Russia's Kursk region is changing the trajectory of the war and boosting the morale of Ukraine's war-weary population, even though the ultimate outcome of the incursion – the first attack on Russia since World War II – remains impossible to predict.

As Ukraine hails its success on Russian territory, the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine is poised to claim another key center, the city of Pokrovsk.

Ukraine’s attacks on the three bridges over the Seim River in Kursk could potentially trap Russian forces between the river, the Ukrainian advance, and the Ukrainian border. They already appear to be slowing down Russia’s response to Ukraine’s Kursk incursion launched on August 6.

Over the weekend, the commander of the Ukrainian Air Force released two videos of bridges over the Seym River being hit, and satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed by The Associated Press on Tuesday confirmed that a bridge in the town of Glushkovo had been destroyed.

A Russian military investigator confirmed Monday that Ukraine had “completely destroyed” a bridge and damaged two others in the region. The exact extent of the damage remains unknown.

“As a result of targeted shelling with rockets and artillery weapons against residential buildings and civilian infrastructure in the village of Karyzh… a third bridge over the Seym River was damaged,” the unnamed representative of the Russian Investigative Committee said in a video posted on the Telegram channel of Russian state TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov.

Russian military bloggers Vladimir Romanov and Yuri Podolyaka and several prominent pro-war Telegram channels in Russia also claimed that the third bridge had been targeted and damaged. Podolyaka’s message was shared by Roman Alekhin, an adviser to the acting Kursk regional governor.

Since the start of the incursion into the Kursk region, the Ukrainian army has captured 1,200 square kilometers and 93 localities, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday, compared to 980 square kilometers a week ago. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi made the remarks during a meeting with local officials.

After a meeting with Syrskyi later Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video address that the Ukrainian military was achieving the “targets set” at Kursk.

Zelensky has said in recent days that the operation was aimed at creating a buffer zone that could prevent future attacks on his country from across the border, and that Ukraine was capturing large numbers of Russian prisoners of war that it hopes to exchange for captured Ukrainians.

The Russian news agency TASS reported that 17 people were killed and 140 injured in the Ukrainian incursion, citing an unnamed source in the Russian medical service. Of the 75 people hospitalized, four are children.

The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry announced Tuesday afternoon that more than 500 people had left the dangerous areas of the Kursk region over the past 24 hours. In total, more than 122,000 people have been relocated since the start of the Ukrainian attack, it said.

In another example of how Ukraine has brought the war to Russian soil, a massive fire raged for the third day in a row after an oil depot was hit by Ukrainian drones.

The fire at the Proletarsk depot spread over an area of ​​1 hectare, according to Russian state news agencies. 500 firefighters took part in the operation, including 41 injured people who have already been hospitalized, according to TASS, citing local officials.

The Ukrainian military's general staff claimed responsibility on Sunday for the attack on the oil depot, which was used to supply the Russian military's needs, calling it a move aimed at “undermining the military and economic potential of the Russian Federation.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Ukrainians of “trying to destabilize our country” and compared them to terrorists.

“We will punish the criminals. There is no doubt about that,” Putin said Tuesday, meeting with mothers of children killed in the 2004 Beslan school attack that left more than 330 people dead.

The Ukrainian incursion exposed Russian vulnerabilities, analysts and Ukrainian officials say.

On Monday, Zelensky said Ukraine’s actions would help allay Western fears that it would offer Kiev more military aid. Some allies have been slowly handing over their weapons and imposing limits on how they can be used, fearing that crossing a Russian “red line” could lead to escalation, or even nuclear escalation.

“We have now achieved an extremely important ideological shift: the naive and illusory concept of so-called 'red lines' regarding Russia, which dominated assessments of the war by some of our partners, has collapsed in recent days somewhere near Sudzha,” the president said, referring to a Russian city retaken from Ukrainian control.

Much remains unknown about Ukrainian operations in Russia, but satellite images provide some clues.

Pontoon bridges, temporary bridges used by the military when official bridges are destroyed, have been seen in satellite imagery provided by Planet Labs PBC at two different locations along the Seym River in recent days. The pontoons were likely built by Russian troops trying to resupply forces in preparation for a bypass of the Ukrainian advance.

On Saturday, a pontoon bridge appeared along the winding course of the river between Glushkovo and the village of Zvannoye, but not in the images taken on Monday. On Monday, smoke could be seen rising along the banks of the river nearby, a typical sign of a strike.

Meanwhile, on the front lines in eastern Ukraine, Russia continued to press the city of Pokrovsk, one of Ukraine’s main defensive strongholds and a key logistics hub in the Donetsk region, forcing Kiev’s forces to withdraw and Ukrainian civilians to flee their homes. Its capture would undermine Ukraine’s defensive capabilities and supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated goal of seizing the entire Donetsk region.

The six months of fierce fighting Russia has waged in the region since the capture of Avdiivka have cost both sides dearly in troops and armour.

Russia wants to control all parts of Donetsk and the neighboring city of Luhansk, which together make up the industrial region of Donbass.

Also on Tuesday, four teenagers were injured after Russian forces struck a park in the Zaporizhzhia region in southern Ukraine, local governor Ivan Fedorov said on Telegram. A 15-year-old boy later died in hospital, according to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office. It was not immediately clear what weapon was used, but Fedorov said the site of the impact was just meters from a children's playground and a cafe.

In the neighboring Kherson region, Russian strikes wounded four men and a 14-year-old boy, local authorities reported. Meanwhile, in the southern Russian region of Belgorod, a Ukrainian drone strike wounded one civilian, according to local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.

Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell contributed to this report.