Ukraine has captured some 150 Russian soldiers a day in its surprise cross-border military attack in Russia’s Kursk region that is just the first of “several stages” of combat directed against Moscow, Kyiv military officials said.
Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the northwest city of Sumy, claimed the advancing Kyiv forces, now 12 days into the incursion, have seized hundreds of Moscow troops while suffering only minimal casualties.
“Sometimes there are more than 100 or 150 prisoners of war a day,” Drozdenko told The Guardian of the success and little resistance put up by the Kremlin forces.
“They do not want to fight us,” he added.
Drozdenko’s claims come as photos have been released of Kyiv trucks hauling off captured Moscow soldiers caught completely by surprise after Ukraine launched its daring assault on Russian soil on Aug. 6.
The military head touted that the incursion has been a major success so far, with Sumy hospitals reporting low numbers of casualties and injuries.
“On the first day of the operation, there were only 15 casualties,” he claimed. “Sixty, 70% of them were very light, caused by bomb damage, shrapnel.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Kyiv is looking to increase its “exchange fund” during the incursion for its prisoner of war deals with Russia.
Drozdenko added that the current operation in Kursk, whose ultimate goal remains a tightlipped secret in Kyiv, is only the first part of Ukraine’s offensive.
“We see only part of this operation, in the future we will see several stages,” he told the UK outlet.
Experts say Ukraine has been largely successful in its attack on Kursk because Russia kept its border largely unmanned and underprepared while focusing on its slow but steady advancements in Donbas and Donetsk.
The operation did not only catch Moscow off guard, but even officials in Sumy, who said they had no advance warning that soldiers would be going through their town to enter Kursk.
The city has now been attacked by Russian cruise missiles and bombs, which sparked a fire and left two soldiers injured on Saturday.
It came as the Kremlin accused Ukrainian forces of using Western-made rockets Friday to take out a strategically important bridge over the Seim River in Kursk.
Ukrainian troops have also allegedly hit a second bridge over the Seim, according to Oleshchuk and the Russian regional governor, Alexei Smirnov.
Russia’s claims could not be verified by independent reports, but if confirmed, the bridge attacks could be a way for Kyiv to undermine Moscow’s attempts to rebuild its forces in Kursk to take on the Ukrainian troops.
With Ukraine now in control of some 400 square miles of land in Kursk, Zelensky is seeking to lift the restrictions placed on the weapons supplied by its allies, including the US, to allow Kyiv to fight deeper and more effectively in Russia.
“It is crucial that our partners remove barriers that hinder us from weakening Russian positions in the way this war demands,” Zelensky said in a statement. “…The bravery of our soldiers and the resilience of our combat brigades compensate for the lack of essential decisions from our partners.”
With Post wires