Russia Ukraine war live: Kyiv targets Moscow with largest ever drone attack as it uses US rockets in Kursk

Ukrainian forces are advancing through Russia’s Kursk region as part of their historic cross-border assault, concentrating their resources on this attack but Moscow’s forces are doing the same in eastern Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky admitted this week the situation on Ukraine’s eastern frontline was “difficult”. Ukraine’s general staff, meanwhile, reported that there had been dozens of combat clashes on several hot points of the frontline in that direction.

As reports surface that Ukraine may have shifted some military resources from the eastern Donetsk region, the site of the most intense fighting in Ukraine, to help prosecute their Kursk incursion, concerns abound that such a move could prove a fatal miscalculation.

A Russian soldier blew up his assault unit’s headquarters before escaping and defecting to Ukraine, Kyiv has revealed.

The soldier, an FPV drone pilot identified only by his call-sign “Silver”, said the operation was meticulously planned with Ukraine’s military intelligence and the Freedom of Russia Legion, a pro-Kyiv Russian partisan group.

Footage showed the moment Silver threw a grenade into a basement where his commander and fellow officers were sleeping, before he disappeared amidst the confusion.

Ukraine said it was destroying Russian pontoon bridges with US-made weapons to defend its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region as Moscow said its forces had halted Kyiv’s advance there and gained ground in eastern Ukraine.

Kyiv has reported a string of battlefield successes since it crossed unexpectedly into Russia’s Kursk region on 6 August but Moscow has steadily inched forward in eastern Ukraine, pressuring troops worn down by two-and-a-half years of fighting.

A video posted by Ukrainian special forces showed strikes on several pontoon crossings in Kursk region, where Russia has reported that Ukraine has destroyed at least three bridges over the Seym river as it seeks to hold the pocket of captured land.

A high resolution satellite image of the third bridge to be targeted by Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region shows it has been significantly damaged.

Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), has confirmed he is ready to visit the Kursk nuclear power plant in Russia at the end of August, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Russia’s Defence Ministry last week accused Ukraine of planning to attack the Kursk plant as part of its ongoing incursion into the Russian region, an assertion Kyiv denied.

“We expect that an understanding of the danger that Ukrainian provocations against Russian nuclear power plants represent will prompt the IAEA’s management to take concrete action to ensure the safety of nuclear power plants in Zaporizhzhia and Kursk,” Zakharova said at a weekly news briefing.

Ukraine has damaged or destroyed three bridges in the Russian region of Kursk as they attempt to consolidate positions gained during their ambitious cross-border assult and cut off supplies to Moscow’s troops.

The first bridge was destroyed in the village of Glushkovo, around eight miles west of Ukrainian troops inside of Russia, on Friday.

The second was destroyed on Saturday in the village of Zvannoye, a further five miles westward.