A Russian missile strike ignited a fire in the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Saturday, while Ukrainian forces continued their advance into Russia’s Kursk border region.

Two people were injured in the Sumy attack, which also caused damage to vehicles and nearby buildings, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service. The service reported that the strike involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.

Ukraine’s air force also reported that it had destroyed 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces have been active since Aug. 6 in an attempt to shift the Kremlin’s military attention away from the front line in Ukraine.

Alexander Kots, a military correspondent for the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, reported that Ukrainian pressure in Kursk “is not letting up yet.”

“The situation in the main sections of the front line has been brought under control. However, there are areas where the enemy is still trying to expand its foothold,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

On Friday, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, stated that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge over the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district using U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets, marking their first deployment in the Kursk region.

Zakharova’s statement couldn’t be independently verified, though the Washington-based think tank, the Institute for the Study of War, reported that geolocated footage published on Aug. 16 showed the bridge collapsing after the strike.

Russian military bloggers asserted that the destruction of bridges would hinder the delivery of supplies to Russian forces, but wouldn't completely cut off the supply lines.

“The pontoons haven't been removed,” Kots affirmed, highlighting that the Seim River is narrower than Ukrainian waterways like the Dnieper River. “There are still smaller bridges available.”

While Russia has faced previous incursions on its territory during the war, the Kursk raid stands out due to its scale, speed, the reported involvement of seasoned Ukrainian brigades, and the extended duration of their presence within Russia. According to Western military analysts, as many as 10,000 Ukrainian troops are involved.

The incursion, which Russian officials say has resulted in the evacuation of over 120,000 civilians, came as a surprise to many, Yan Furtsev, an activist and member of the local opposition party Yabloko, told the AP.

“No one anticipated that such a conflict was even conceivable in the Kursk region. That is why there is such disarray and fear, because citizens are arriving (from front-line areas) and they’re terrified, very frightened,” he said.

Ukrainian forces have also apprehended a number of Russian soldiers as they have advanced across the region.

On Friday, the AP visited a detention facility in Ukraine, the location of which cannot be revealed due to security concerns. Dozens of POWs were observed, some of them walking with their hands bound behind their backs while a guard escorted them down a corridor. Some had rations of a thin soup containing cabbage and onions.

On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed gratitude to Ukrainian soldiers and commanders for capturing Russian military personnel and stated that the country’s “exchange fund” that it would use to negotiate the return of Ukrainian POWs was being replenished.

“My gratitude goes out to all our soldiers and commanders who are capturing Russian military personnel, thereby facilitating the release of our warriors and civilians held by Russia,” Zelenskyy expressed in a post on X.