Having targeted the permanent bridges, Ukraine’s military shared a video Wednesday saying its special forces were using the U.S.-manufactured high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) to destroy pontoon bridges and engineering equipment in the Kursk region as well — a first official acknowledgement that Kyiv was using Western weapons in the Kursk offensive.
Pontoon bridges are temporary structures that militaries often build to maintain critical supply lines when permanent structures are damaged or destroyed.
NBC News was able to geolocate a segment of the video to a bend on the Seim River several miles from Glushkovo, where a bridge span was hit earlier. NBC News was not able to verify whether the video shows the destruction of a pontoon bridge or when it was shot.
Another video shared Thursday by the country’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, claimed to show Ukraine’s use of guided aerial bombs to destroy two “bridge crossings” in Kursk this week. NBC News also geolocated part of that video to an area close to Glushkovo.
The abundance of videos shared by Kyiv in recent days could signal its intention to project confidence over its ability to strike targets and stoke unease inside Russia.
“We must all understand that to drive the occupier from our land, we must create as many problems for the Russian state as possible on its own territory,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday.
And those problems are surely accumulating for the Kremlin.
A diesel depot in the town of Proletarsk in Russia’s southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, has been ablaze for days after it was hit by Ukrainian drones on Sunday. More than 500 firefighters have been battling the fire, which at one point spread to over 100,000 square feet, according to Russian state media.
Ukraine claimed responsibility for hitting the depot, which its army’s general staff said stored oil products used to supply the Russian army. Regional Gov. Vasily Golubev blamed the fire — which he said was affecting “warehouses” in Proletarsk, without specifying that a strategic depot was involved — on falling drone debris.
Satellite images captured on Monday, the day after the alleged attack, show flames and thick clouds of black smoke billowing from the depot. Other satellite images showed the blaze still burning on Thursday.
