Russia says it recapture key town in Kursk

The Russian Defence Ministry published a video it said showed troops evacuating civilians from Sudzha and Kazach’ya Loknya, in Russia's western Kursk region, recently liberated from Ukraine.

It was not clear in the video which location was which and the information was not provided by the ministry.

In one of the most striking battles of the three-year-old Ukraine war, Ukrainian forces smashed their way across Russia's western border in Kursk last August, marking the biggest attack on sovereign Russian territory since the Nazi invasion of 1941.

But a lightning offensive this month has reduced the area under Ukrainian control to about 110 square km (42 square miles), down from the more than 1,368 square km (528 square miles) claimed by Kyiv last year, according to open source maps.

A voice narrating the video says he filmed the evacuees in a school and that they were the "first batch" to be moved to safety. He adds that the soldiers will come back to evacuate more people.

Whilst filming the road the narrator says :"It's just littered with metal fragments. Look, the TMs (anti-tank mines) are again lying on the side of the road. The entire road is littered with anti-tank mines," adding that some of those were placed near a bus stop.

The Defence ministry said Russian forces had retaken control of Sudzha, a major town in Russia's western Kursk region.

The recapture of the town, home to a now-idle metering station for Russian gas to Europe, is a significant gain for Russia.

Battlefield maps from both Ukraine and Russia showed two joined pockets of Ukrainian forces on the Russian side of the border in Kursk. Russia said it was clearing large numbers of mines in the area.