Russian missile sparks blaze in Ukraine as Kyiv’s troops push into Russia’s Kursk region

Russia kept up its assault on Ukraine Saturday even as Ukrainian forces pushed into Russia's Kursk border region.

A Russian missile sparked a blaze in the city of Sumy that injured two people and also damaged cars and nearby buildings, said Ukraine's State Emergency Service. It said that the hit had involved an Iskander-K cruise missile and an aerial bomb.

Ukraine's air force also said it had shot down 14 Russian drones overnight, including over the Kyiv region.

Meanwhile, fighting continued in Russia's Kursk region, where Ukrainian troops have been deployed since Aug. 6 in a bid to divert the Kremlin's military focus away from the front line in Ukraine.

On Thursday, Ukrainian forces said they had seized the town of Sudzha, 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border. With a prewar population of roughly 5,000, it is the biggest town to fall to Ukraine's troops since the incursion began.

Associated Press journalists traveled to the area Friday on a Ukrainian government-organized trip. Artillery fire had blown chunks out of a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin in the town's central square, while the bright yellow facade of a local administration building was scorched and pockmarked with bullet holes.

Alexander Kots, military correspondent with the pro-Kremlin newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, said that Ukrainian pressure in Kursk "is not weakening yet."

"In the main sections of the ragged front, the situation has stabilized. But there are areas where the enemy continues to try to expand its bridgehead," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Friday that Ukraine had destroyed a bridge across the Seim River in the Glushkovsky district with U.S.-made HIMARS rockets, marking their