Ukrainian Himars artillery has destroyed a key bridge across a river in the Kursk region that Russia was using to reinforce its embattled soldiers.
Russian military bloggers said the destruction of the road bridge across the Seym River outside the village of Glushkovo would force Russian reinforcements on a dangerous detour.
“If (when) the enemy manages to destroy all good crossings, it will cut off the entire group of the Russian Armed Forces defending in the Glushkovo district,” the Russian Telegram channel Military Observer posted.
Glushkovo lies about 15 miles north of the border with Ukraine and is roughly 40 miles west of Sudzha, the focus of Ukraine’s initial cross-border assault last week.
The Russian ministry of defence has not commented but Tough Kursk, a local Russian Telegram channel, confirmed the strike.
It published a video of the heavily damaged bridge before it was completely destroyed, already punctured by precise artillery shell strikes from the US-made weapons.
“They are trying to destroy the bridge, probably with Himars,” said the reporter after stopping briefly on the bridge to point out the damage before speeding off. “We’re getting out of here.”
Later photos showed the bridge snapped in two with the middle section jutting out of the river below.
The Baza Telegram channel, which has links to the Russian security forces, confirmed that the bridge had been destroyed by Ukrainian Himars and said that a second bridge a few miles downstream was now being targeted.
On Friday, Oleskander Syrsky, Ukraine’s top general, said that his army’s forces had advanced up to three kilometres further into enemy territory.
The Kremlin has responded to the first invasion of Russia since the Second World War, launched 11 days ago, by rushing troops, tanks and armoured vehicles to the border region.
On Friday, Nikolai Patrushev, a key adviser to Vladimir Putin, blamed the West for the Ukraine attack which he said “had been planned with the participation of Nato special forces”.
British Challenger II tanks and other Western equipment have been used in the attack but Britain has refused to give Ukraine permission to use its Storm Shadow missiles to strike targets further inside Russia.
On Friday, Boris Johnson urged Britain to give permission to Volodymyr Zelensky to use the long-range missiles.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the former prime minister urged Sir Keir Starmer to stop “pussyfooting around” and to give Ukraine the green light to use the “bunker-busting” missiles made by the UK and France.
“Can we finally cut the cackle, drop the ludicrous Putin-phobia and give the Ukrainians the tools they really need to finish the job,” he said.
The US has previously given Ukraine permission to use its Himars artillery against targets up to 65 miles inside Russia, which means that bridges across the Seym River are in range.
The Ministry of Defence has now said that after initial confusion, the Russian military has reorganised its defences in the Kursk region and has built “additional defensive positions”.
This has meant pulling together a hotchpotch of different forces, including some regular army units, the FSB’s Border Guards, the National Guard and conscripts.
Of these forces, analysts said that the deployment of conscripts was the most controversial in Russia because conscription is regarded as a rite of passage for young men rather than a war-fighting machine.
“There is the idea that you might say that they’re still kind of half-children,” said Mark Galeotti, an honorary professor at UCL and the author of several books on Russia and Putin. “They have been entrusted by their family to the state, and therefore the state should at least not waste them.”
Reports from the first few days of the incursion said that hundreds of conscripts barely out of basic training had surrendered to the Ukrainian army.
Videos of callow teenage Russian conscripts captured by battle-hardened Ukrainian soldiers have filled social media channels.
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An online petition of mothers begging Putin to withdraw conscripts from battle has received nearly 10,000 signatures.
On the ‘Go to the forest’ Telegram channel, a Russian language anti-war information channel, a woman described how her son had only been given 10 days of basic training and fired a rifle twice before he had been sent into battle in Kursk.
“They lined up everyone who had just arrived from the training ground, and selected 90 people who were sent to Kursk,” she said. “Tomorrow, other guys are being sent there.”
Although researchers have said that only a few hundred conscripts have been killed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, they have not been heavily deployed in Ukraine as conscripts are only legally allowed to fight inside Russia’s borders.
Stephen Hall, an assistant professor of Russian politics at the University of Bath, said that the Kremlin-linked media was “trying to keep the deployment of conscripts quiet” but news has still leaked out and was causing disquiet in Russia.
A Russian living in a major city told The Telegraph that people were split on the deployment of conscripts.
“Some are afraid for the conscripts but others also said that this is their job, that they must protect the country,” the source said.
