Russia re-takes control of 10 villages during counter-attack in Kursk: army

Russia said its army had recaptured 10 settlements in its Kursk border region, where Ukraine last month launched a major cross-border incursion.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also conceded Russia had launched its own counter-attack in the region, but insisted that the shock incursion was still going to plan.

"Units of the 'North' group of troops liberated 10 settlements within two days," Russia's Defence Ministry said in a statement posted on its Telegram channel.

Ukraine claimed at the end of August to have taken control of some 100 Russian settlements and almost 1,300 square kilometres (500 square miles) of territory.

The surprise offensive, launched on August 6, is the first time a foreign army had taken control of parts of Russia since World War II.

"The Russians have launched counter-offensive actions," Zelenskyy said at a press conference in Kiev on Thursday.

He did not provide details on the extent of Russian operations, but said the incursion was "going in line with our Ukrainian plan".

Zelenskyy also claimed that a Russian attack on vehicles of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Thursday in his country's east had killed three people.

Russia hammers Ukrainian rail, transport hubs

Russian forces have also knocked out power and water to a rail hub in northern Ukraine and severed water supplies to the eastern town of Pokrovsk on Thursday, causing disruption behind the front lines as they try to advance on the battlefield.

More than 2-1/2 years since it began, the war in Ukraine is at a critical juncture, with Moscow regularly pounding Ukrainian infrastructure as its troops try to complete the capture of the whole of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region.

Russian forces have been gaining ground in parts of east Ukraine including Pokrovsk, whose capture could enable Moscow to open up new lines of attack and complicate Ukrainian logistics in the east.

Donetsk's regional governor said a filtering station had stopped working because of heavy fighting, severing the water supply to Pokrovsk. He said it would be impossible to fix soon and renewed calls to civilians to flee the town.

"The situation is difficult and it won't get better soon. So I again call on you to evacuate!" the official, Vadym Filashkin , wrote in a statement on the Telegram messaging app.

The town, which straddles several important roads that pass through the Donetsk region and has a rail line, has also lost supply of electricity and gas used for cooking and heating, local authorities said.

Russian momentum has slowed in the areas nearest Pokrovsk, but Moscow's forces have pressed south from that line of attack, closing in on the nearby town of Ukrainsk, open-source intelligence reports by Ukraine's Deep State analysts indicate.

Ukraine's military said their forces on the nearby Kurakhiv front, which includes Ukrainsk, were continuing to hold back Moscow's troops.

Russia tried to break through Kiev's lines in the area 23 times over the last day, it said.

Some Russian military bloggers said Moscow's forces had almost taken control of Ukrainsk, which had a pre-war population of more than 10,000. There was no immediate update from Russia on its advance in the area.