Ukraine’s General Staff has confirmed that it has withdrawn from the town of Sudzha,days after Russia said it had re-captured it.
The recapture of the largest town that Ukraine had occupied in Russia’s Kursk region is another gain in Russia’s offensive to push Ukrainian forces out of their territory.
Reports suggest Sudzha was one of the hardest-fought battles in the more than three year-long war.
Sudzha had a reported population of about 5,000 people before the offensive, but is now reported to be greatly damaged.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Thursday that Russian aircraft had conducted so many strikes on Kursk, that the town is almost completely destroyed.
Over the past weeks, Russian troops have recaptured much of the area that Ukraine seized after its surprise cross-border attack in the Kursk region in August last year.
The Kursk region has started planning the reconstruction and development of areas recaptured from Ukrainian control, Alexander Khinshtein, the acting governor of the region, said on Saturday.
According to Khinshtein, the most urgent tasks are to thoroughly clear landmines and restore the population to the levels before the Ukrainian forces entered the region.
Also on Saturday, the Russian Defence Ministry said its engineering units have already started demining operations in reclaimed border areas of the Kursk region.
The efforts are aimed at restoring essential infrastructure and allowing economic activities to resume following intense combat, the ministry said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s northern city of Chernihiv was struck by multiple Russian drones in overnight attacks according to the head of the Chernihiv City Military Administration Dmytro Bryzhynskyi.
Russian drones hit residential high-rise buildings causing a fire that was put out by rescuers.
Bryzhynskyi also reported that a drone hit a five-story building and damaged private houses.
Also in the Chernihiv region, a Russian ballistic missile reportedly crashed outside the border town of Semenivka, near Russia, causing a partial power outage according to Ukrainian authorities.
