Key civilian leader says attack on Russia’s Kursk region is first of ‘several stages’ in taking the fight to Moscow

Ukraine has captured more than 150 Russian prisoners of war on some days in the cross-border military operation that a key civilian official said was the first of “several stages” in taking the fight to Moscow.

Oleksii Drozdenko, the head of the military administration in the Ukrainian city of Sumy, said the attack had fared better than expected and there had been only 15 casualties needing hospital treatment on the first day.

After months of being pushed steadily back – short of troops and ammunition – a Kyiv offensive to occupy a chunk of Russian territory took the Kremlin by surprise. The move has a clear political logic but is fraught with military danger

The immediate impact of Ukraine’s incursion into the Russian region of Kursk that began on 6 August has been a transformation in the morale of the Ukrainian public and even more so the narrative among Ukraine’s international partners.

The slow but inexorable loss of ground in Donbas that painted a grim picture of retreat has been replaced by images of a dynamic front. While deceptive, this new narrative is important in reminding Ukraine’s international partners that outcomes in war are not inevitable.

Kyiv’s push into Russia has psychological and political advantages, but it knows Putin cannot let it lie

• Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

Nine days into Ukraine’s incursion into Russia, and Kyiv is showing increasing confidence. Two soldiers, speaking off the record by a dusty roadside a few miles from the border, said they expected logistics functions to be brought forward “inside Russia” because supply lines were becoming stretched.

Though it is a fragmentary detail – being more specific would endanger life – it demonstrates that as Ukraine’s forces continue to advance into Kursk oblast, Kyiv is gradually becoming more committed to an incursion that may have begun brightly, but the eventual outcome of which remains profoundly uncertain.