Zelenskyy visits Ukraine border area where forces launched Russia incursion

While in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, Zelenskyy said the new POWs from the Russian region of Kursk would help build an “exchange fund” to swap for captured Ukrainians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his first visit Thursday to the border area where his forces launched their surprise offensive into Russia, saying that Kyiv’s military had taken control of another Russian village and captured more prisoners of war.

While in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region, Zelenskyy said the new POWs from the Russian region of Kursk would help build an “exchange fund” to swap for captured Ukrainians.

“Another settlement in the Kursk region is now under Ukrainian control, and we have replenished the exchange fund,” Zelenskyy wrote on the social media platform X after hearing a report from his country’s top military commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Zelenskyy did not name the newly captured village and did not cross over into Russia, which would been regarded by Moscow as a provocation. He previously has said that Ukraine has no plans to occupy the area long term but wants to create a buffer zone to prevent further attacks from that area into Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said the Kursk operation launched Aug. 6 has reduced Russian shelling and civilian casualties in the Sumy region.

He said during a separate event Thursday in Kyiv that the incursion, as well as Ukrainian defences in the country’s east where Russia has concentrated its offensive push were part of a path “to end the war under the conditions of independent Ukraine.”

In another example of Ukraine’s intensifying attacks on Russia, emergency authorities in Russia’s Krasnodar region said a Ukrainian strike hit a cargo ferry loaded with fuel tanks at the port of Kavkaz, sparking a blaze. The port is on the Kerch Strait linking the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Russian Telegram channels posted videos purportedly showing a huge fire caused by the strike.