Zelenskyy makes 1st visit to border area where Ukrainian forces launched offensive into Russia

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first visit Thursday to the border area where his forces launched their surprise offensive into Russia, saying that Kyiv’s military had taken control of another Russian village and captured more prisoners of war.

While in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, Zelenskyy said the new POWs from the Russian region of Kursk would help build an “exchange fund” to swap for captured Ukrainians.

“Another settlement in the Kursk region is now under Ukrainian control, and we have replenished the exchange fund,” Zelenskyy wrote on the social media platform X after hearing a report from his country’s top military commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Zelenskyy did not name the newly captured village and did not cross over into Russia, which would been regarded by Moscow as a provocation. He previously has said that Ukraine has no plans to occupy the area long term but wants to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from that area into Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said the Kursk operation launched Aug. 6 has reduced Russian shelling and civilian casualties in the Sumy region.

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In another example of Ukraine’s intensifying attacks on Russia, emergency authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar region said a Ukrainian strike hit a cargo ferry loaded with fuel tanks at the port of Kavkaz, sparking a blaze. The port is on the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Russian Telegram channels posted videos purportedly showing a huge fire caused by the strike.

The daring Ukrainian foray has rattled the Kremlin, showing Russia’s vulnerability and shattering President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to pretend that the country has been largely unaffected by the 2 1/2-year war.

Ukraine’s push into Russia marks the first capture of Russian territory since World War II, but it comes as Kyiv continues to lose ground in eastern Ukraine.

Authorities in the city of Kursk, the capital of the Kursk region, began to put up concrete shelters at bus stops and other locations to protect against shelling. They plan similar work in Zheleznogorsk and Kurchatov, where a nuclear power plant is located, the region’s acting Gov. Alexei Smirnov said on his Telegram channel.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it received a report from Russia that fragments of an intercepted drone were found Thursday on the plant’s territory.

“Military activity in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant is a serious risk to nuclear safety and security,” said IAEA Director Rafael Grossi, who plans to visit the site next week.

Putin has ordered the creation of self-defense units in Russian regions bordering Ukraine, the Russian leader said in a video call with officials.

Smirnov reported to Putin that over 133,000 people have left areas affected by the fighting in the Kursk region, while more than 19,000 have stayed.

The governor of Bryansk, another Russian region bordering Ukraine, said authorities there have conducted training for emergency evacuation as a precaution.

Separately, the Russian Defense Ministry reported repelling Ukrainian attacks near the villages of Komarovka, Malaya Loknya, Korenevka and several other settlements in the Kursk region.

Education Minister Sergey Kravtsov said 114 schools in Russia’s border regions will start teaching remotely when the school year begins at the start of September.

Elsewhere, the Defense Ministry said Thursday that its military has claimed control of the Ukrainian village of Mezhove in Donetsk, part of the industrial Donbas region that Moscow seeks to take entirely.

Both sides in the war have been using drones to attack deep behind enemy lines.

Ukraine attacked Russia overnight with 28 drones, the Defense Ministry said. Thirteen were shot down over the Volgograd region, seven over the Rostov region, four over the Belgorod region, two over the Voronezh region, and one each over the Bryansk and Kursk regions, the ministry said.

Andrei Bocharov, governor of the Volgograd region, said Thursday that a military facility caught fire after being attacked by drones in the area of Marinovka, where Russia has a military air base. He did not specify what was damaged.

Videos shared on Russian social media showed an explosion in the night sky, reportedly near the base. Marinovka is about 300 kilometers (185 miles) east of the Ukrainian border.

Ukraine claimed responsibility for the attack. Ukraine’s security service and its special operation forces conducted the drone attack Wednesday night, striking the Marinovka airfield, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

The Baza Telegram channel, which is close to Russian law enforcement, said one drone was taken down several kilometers (miles) from the airfield near Marinovka and that wreckage from another fell on a trailer near the air base, causing it to catch fire.

Data from NASA fire-watching satellites, which monitor Earth for forest blazes, showed fires breaking out around the air base’s apron, where fighter jets were previously seen parked.

Another fire burned Thursday in Russia’s Rostov region, where firefighters struggled for a fifth day to put out flames at an oil depot following a Ukrainian attack in the town of Proletarsk. State news agency Tass said 47 firefighters have been injured while putting out the blaze.

Satellite photos from Planet Labs PBC analyzed Thursday by The Associated Press showed the fire at the oil depot still intensely burning as of Wednesday. Storage tanks at the facility appeared engulfed in flames. Flames could be seen in the images, with a thick black smoke cloud drifting west over the city of Proletarsk.

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Associated Press writers Emma Burrows in London and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.