Russia has accused Ukraine of using Western rockets – likely made in the United States – to target a strategic bridge over the Seym River in the Kursk region, killing volunteers trying to evacuate civilians.
Ukrainian forces hit the bridge in the Glushkovsky district of Kursk on Friday as they pushed forward with their incursion into the territory in western Russia.
“For the first time, the Kursk region was hit by Western-made rocket launchers, probably American HIMARS,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said late on Friday on the Telegram messaging app.
“As a result of the attack on the bridge … it was completely destroyed, and volunteers who were assisting the evacuated civilian population were killed.”
Russia’s news agency TASS released the names of two volunteers it said were “murdered” in the attack.
Russian officials also have said the destruction of the bridge will hinder the evacuation of civilians from the area.
Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk comes just months after the US and several of its NATO allies said in May that they had authorised Kyiv to use their weapons to attack targets inside Russia.
Al Jazeera’s Defence Editor Alex Gatopoulos said Friday’s bridge bombing will make it difficult for Russian forces to defend the area against Ukrainian advances and access supplies.
“Russian units there [are] caught between a river and a hard place – not very many places for them to go at the moment,” he said.
“Now, there’s going to be an issue for the Russians because if they can’t supply these units with the ammunition that they need – and the fuel – then these units will be forced to retreat over the river.”
The Ukrainian military, which has been battling a Russian invasion since February 2022, launched the Kursk offensive earlier this month – a campaign that has been described as the first incursion by a foreign army into Russia since World War II.
On Thursday, Ukraine said it captured the Russian town of Sudzha, a strategic natural gas hub in the Kursk region.
Kyiv claims it has taken control of 82 settlements in Russia over an area of 1,150sq km (440sq miles) since August 6.
Ukrainian officials have said the country does not aim to hold on to Russian territory. On Thursday, a Ukrainian presidential adviser said the Kursk incursion can be “used to convince the Russian Federation to enter into a fair negotiation process”.
Marina Miron, a military analyst at King’s College London, told Al Jazeera that politically, Ukraine is hoping to use its Kursk operation “as a bargaining chip” in negotiations with Russia.
“It is important [that] Ukraine is saying they are not going to occupy that land,” said Miron.
She noted that the incursion – and the use of Western equipment on Russian oil – “has caused some concerns even if it was accepted that Ukraine is doing this operation to defend itself”.
Kyiv also is trying to “relieve pressure” from the Donbas region by drawing Russian troops into Kursk, Miron added.
That “doesn’t seem to be working as of yet, but it is clear that the Ukrainian forces are trying to entrench themselves in that region”, she said.
For its part, Moscow has insisted that it is succeeding in repelling the Ukrainian offensive and inflicting heavy losses on Kyiv’s forces.
On Saturday, TASS reported – citing the Russia’s Ministry of Defence – that Russian forces shot down 10 HIMARS rockets and 35 Ukrainian drones, and killed 420 “enemy servicemen” in the past 24 hours.
Reporting from Moscow, Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari highlighted that both sides are releasing contradictory accounts of what is happening.
“Of course, it’s very difficult to independently verify what is happening on the ground,” Jabbari said. “We are getting different versions of what is happening from the Ukrainian side as well as the counter-narrative coming out of the Russian Defence Ministry.”
