LONDON (AP) — Russian special forces walked inside a gas pipeline to strike Ukrainian units from the rear in the Kursk region, Ukraine's military and Russian war bloggers reported, as Moscow claimed fresh gains in its push to recapture parts of the border province that Kyiv seized in a shock offensive.
Ukraine launched a daring cross-border incursion into Kursk in August, marking the largest attack on Russian territory since World War II. Within days, Ukrainian units had captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of territory, including the strategic border town of Sudzha, and taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.
According to Kyiv, the operation aimed to gain a bargaining chip in future peace talks and to force Russia to divert troops away from its grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.
But months after Ukraine’s thunder run, its soldiers in Kursk are weary and bloodied by relentless assaults of more than 50,000 troops, including some from Russian ally North Korea. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are at risk of being encircled, open-source maps of the battlefield show.
According to Telegram posts late Saturday by a Ukrainian-born, pro-Kremlin blogger, Russian operatives walked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) inside the pipeline, which Moscow had until recently used to send gas to Europe. Some Russian troops spent several days in the pipe before striking Ukrainian units from the rear near Sudzha, blogger Yuri Podolyaka claimed.
The town had some 5,000 residents before the full-scale February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and it houses major gas transfer and measuring stations along the pipeline, which was once a major outlet for Russian natural gas exports through Ukrainian territory.
Another war blogger, who uses the alias Two Majors, said fierce fighting was underway for Sudzha, and that Russian forces managed to enter the town through a gas pipeline. Russian Telegram channels showed photos of what they said were special forces operatives, wearing gas masks and moving along what looked like the inside of a large pipe.
Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed Saturday evening that Russian “sabotage and assault groups” used the pipeline in a bid to gain a foothold outside Sudzha. In a Telegram post, it said Russian troops were “detected in a timely manner” and that Ukraine responded with rockets and artillery.
“At present, Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. The enemy’s losses in Sudzha are very high,” the General Staff reported.
A third Russian war blogger argued that the attacking force lacked the logistical backup to succeed.
“Food, water, ammunition, communications, charging electrical devices, power banks, the approach of the main forces, evacuating the wounded … Two or three groups in the rear without all this — that’s a disaster,” the blogger, who describes himself as a soldier with the call sign Thirteenth, wrote on Telegram.
The Associated Press could not independently verify the accounts.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Sunday that its troops had taken four villages north and northwest of Sudzha, with the closest lying some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the center of the town. The claim came a day after the ministry reported the capture of three more villages near Sudzha.
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the Russian claims.
Trump questions Ukraine's survival, while France announces new aid package
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday that Ukraine “may not survive" as he continued to withhold American arms and intelligence in an effort to force Kyiv into peace negotiations with its invader.
In an interview with Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Trump was asked about a warning from Polish President Andrzej Duda “that without American support, Ukraine will not survive” and whether he was “comfortable” with that outcome.
He replied, “Well, it may not survive anyway.” He added, “But we have some weaknesses with Russia. You know, it takes two.”
In other developments, French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu said Sunday that France will use profits from frozen Russian assets to finance an additional 195 million euros ($211 million) in arms for Ukraine, the latest in a series of military aid deliveries funded through the assets.
In an interview with the La Tribune Dimanche newspaper, Lecornu said Paris will send new 155 mm artillery shells and glide bombs for Mirage 2000 fighter jets it previously gave to Ukraine.
Ukrainian drones said to target Russian oil infrastructure
Elsewhere, Russian officials and Telegram channels reported that Ukrainian drones targeted oil infrastructure in southern and central Russia overnight into early Sunday. One drone struck an oil depot in Cheboksary, a Russian city on the Volga River about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the border, the local governor reported. According to Oleg Nikolaev, nobody was hurt, but the depot needed reconstruction work.
Footage circulated on Russian Telegram channels of what appeared to be a fire at or near one of Russia's largest oil refineries, in the southern city of Ryazan. Shot, a news channel on Telegram, cited local residents as saying they heard several nighttime blasts near the refinery. The local governor, Pavel Malkov, said Ukrainian drones had been shot down nearby. He claimed there had been no casualties or damage.
Ukraine did not immediately comment on either incident.
Satellite internet fuels sharp social media exchange
Concerns that Elon Musk could turn off Starlink satellite internet service to Ukraine prompted a sharp exchange Sunday on X involving Musk, the Polish foreign minister and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski wrote that if Musk's rocket company SpaceX, which runs Starlink, "proves to be an unreliable provider,” Poland "will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
Musk told Sikorski: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”
Rubio told Sikorski: “No one has made any threats about cutting Ukraine off from Starlink. And say thank you because without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
In fact, Russians are already on the border with Poland because the Russian region of Kaliningrad lies on Poland’s northern border.
The back-and-forth between the three concluded with Sikorski thanking Rubio: “Thank you, Marco, for confirming that the brave soldiers of Ukraine can count on the vital internet service provided jointly by the U.S and Poland. Together, Europe and the United States can help Ukraine to achieve a just peace.”
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Associated Press writers Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Zeke Miller in West Palm Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.
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Follow AP's coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
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