Kremlin troops isolated in a Kursk border region adjacent to Ukraine lost their last clear path to safety and possibly were trapped, following a punishing Ukrainian missile or bomb strike that demolished a tactically critical road bridge crossing the Seym River.
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The daylight attack hitting the reinforced concrete hard road structure was recorded by unmanned aircraft operated by the Ukrainian tactical drone unit Khorne Group, which published footage of the strike on Sept. 8.
Khorne drone video images showed three weapons striking an already-damaged central span of the bridge in succession with near-pinpoint precision. The first two warheads scattered cluster munitions that detonated on the bridge or in the water, and the third weapon detonated with a single, unitary explosion, Kyiv Post review found.
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A Khorne statement said the bridge was located adjacent to the Kursk region village of Karyzh and that, following the strike, the span was no longer usable to vehicles. Ukraine’s military on Monday published a Russian dashcam video likely showing the strike from the viewpoint of a driver.
Kyiv Post geo-location confirmed the strike’s location to be near Karyzh, a settlement southeast of the Seym River.
Russian social media last week had shown the bridge, which already had been damaged by Ukrainian strikes in past weeks, to be passable to narrow wheel-based civilian vehicles operated by motorists willing to take risks.
As of Monday, per the latest video images reviewed by Kyiv, the bridge could still be crossed on foot or by bicycle, but not by larger vehicles. Major Ukrainian media reported the bridge was completely impassible following the latest strikes.
Ukraine’s ambitious Aug. 6 offensive into Russia’s Kursk region has captured hundreds of Russian prisoners of war and carved out a roughly 25-km by 55-km swath of Russian Federation territory in a little more than a month of fighting.
The salient push into Russia by Kyiv’s forces left some Kremlin troops cut off because the only routes to and from the border region where they were stationed cross three bridges over the Seym River, all of which have been under intense Ukrainian fire since the counter-invasion into Russia kicked off.
By Aug. 20 two of the bridges had been destroyed by air-dropped bombs or tactical missiles, while the bridge near Karyzh was damaged.
In the Sept. 8 video, patterns of cluster munition scatter, and scale of explosions, were visibly similar or even identical to blast patterns made by a US-made M30 GMLRS (Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System) rockets in past strikes, but Kyiv Post could not conclusively confirm that was the weapon observed by the Khorne drone.
Aside from the M30 Ukraine’s army operates Soviet-era legacy rocket artillery firing cluster munitions, and small numbers of air-dropped bombs containing cluster munitions donated by Western allies.
Ukraine’s Armed Forces General Staff in situation reports on Sunday and Monday did not refer to the Seym River or Russian forces possibly cut off in the sector to the south of that waterway but claimed that Ukrainian troops were still advancing and that the Kursk offensive was proceeding as planned.
In past attacks, per statements by Ukraine’s army intelligence agency, HUR, strikes against Seym River bridges were launched by US-made HIMARS rocket artillery, with targeting data collected by HUR operators.
The Khorne Group is a tactical drone unit normally operating with the 116th Mechanized Brigade, a combat formation currently reported to be fighting in the Kursk region.
Since mid-August Russian military engineers have built at least three pontoon bridges on the Seym that, according to Ukrainian military media, were destroyed once located by Ukrainian reconnaissance. The number and existence of Russian pontoon bridges over the Seym, or possibly their absence, is a Russian military secret. In this sector, the Seym River is at least 20 meters wide and too deep for fording, but easily crossable by small boat or swimming.
According to Ukrainian news reports, the destruction of all bridges over the Seym has left as many as 3,000 Russian troops cut off inside a pocket of land some 30 km wide by 20 km deep. According to Monday Russian Defense Ministry Kremlin forces deployed in the Kursk region are fighting from stable defenses at all locations.
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