Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian positions in the south of the war-torn country, new footage appears to show, as fighting rumbles on around the Black Sea while fierce clashes continue in the east and in southern Russia.
A brief video, shared by Ukraine's forces in the south of the country, purports to show a "strike against the concentration of the enemy on the Kinburn Spit." The clip appears to show munitions landing on land close to water, with smoke rising.
Newsweek could not independently verify the clip, and has reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email.
The Kinburn Spit, currently controlled by Russia, sits at the mouth of the Dnieper River and can control vessels arriving at and departing from the Ukrainian port of Mykolaiv.
Ukraine made sweeping gains in the southern Kherson region in its first counteroffensive in late 2022, pushing Russian forces back to the east bank of the Dnieper River that has roughly marked the front lines in the region throughout 202 and 2024.
Battles in the south have attracted less attention than the bitter clashes marking the more dynamic chunks of the front line, such as in the eastern Donetsk oblast and in Russia's Kursk region, where Moscow is batting back Kyiv's forces now months into a surprise cross-border incursion.
Serhii Bratchuk, a Ukrainian official in southern Ukraine, said earlier this month that Russia "clings to this location because it allows them to maintain pressure on the northwestern Black Sea region."
Ukraine has been able to threaten Russia's presence in the northwestern Black Sea, using a combination of drone and missile strikes to put a dent in Moscow's fleet in the region. Ukrainian and Western intelligence has evaluated that Russia has shifted many of its vessels further east in the area, toward its alternative Black Sea Fleet base at Novorossiysk.
"Today, we cannot say that an offensive on the Kinburn Spit will happen immediately," Bratchuk said in remarks reported by Ukrainian news agency, Ukrinform. But "the question is not whether to liberate Kinburn, but when."
"The actions of the defense forces around the Kinburn Spit are gradual, with combat operations taking place periodically," Bratchuk added. "The objective is clear: to eliminate enemy personnel, equipment, and weaken their defenses in this location. The spit is a strategic point essential for advancing and liberating our lands."
In early August, Ukraine's GUR military intelligence agency said it had launched a raid on Russian positions on the spit. The operation killed "about three dozen" Russian soldiers, the agency said, and destroyed a slew of armored vehicles.
"The Kinburn Spit will be free, like all other temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine," the GUR said.
A source in Ukraine's SBU security agency told Newsweek in May that Kyiv was using upgraded naval drones to target Russian positions around the Kinburn Spit.
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