Russian propagandist bloggers are claiming that Ukrainian forces have secured a “foothold” in the border area, Ukrainian media reports.

Telegram channels affiliated with Russia’s Defence Ministry claimed that Ukraine have captured three villages in the Sudzha district of the Kursk region, which borders Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region.

They further claimed that Ukrainian troops have attempted to take control of the road connecting Rylsk and Sudzha.

Ukraine has not yet provided any comment on the events in the Kursk region, and many reports emerging from Russian outlets have not been independently verified.

More details and images are emerging on the previously reported attack on central Kharkiv, where casualties have now increased to five.

A medical facility was damaged in the missile attack, according to the city’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov.

Two people have been hospitalised and five injured in the strike, which reportedly saw a Russian Iskander missile strike the Shevchenkivskyi district of central Kharkiv, according to Ukrainska Pravda.

The attack damaged a health centre, multiple cars, and other civilian infrastructure facilities, with local reports adding it set off a fire.

The chief of Kharkiv’s military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said: “The attack on Kharkiv’s Shevchenkivskyi district: around 10 in the morning, [Russian] occupation forces targeted the area with an Iskander missile.

“Doctors treated at least five injured civilians. Two women have been hospitalised for surgery and the rest were treated on an outpatient basis.”

There are fears there may be other casualties under the rubble.

Russia has sent reserve troops to its southern Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, after up to 300 Ukrainian fighters attacked its border units , the Russian defence ministry said.

The regional governor said earlier that Russian forces thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to penetrate the border but the situation remained “difficult”.

Ukraine’s air force claims to have shot down all 30 attack drones launched by Russia overnight over seven regions.

Identifying the drones as Iran-designed kamikaze “Shahed” drones, Kyiv’s air force said they were launched from two Russian port towns on the Azov Sea.

Thirty drones were detected and all were shot down in the regions of Kyiv, Khmelnytskyi, Vinnytsia, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Kharkiv and Cherkasy regions, the air force claimed.

Russian attacks across Ukraine killed at least three people and injured 14 over the past day, regional authorities reported this morning.

13 regions came under attack, with the casualties reported in the regions of Dnipropetrovsk (central east), Kharkiv (north east), Kherson (south), Zaporizhzhia (south east), and Donetsk (east).

Russia fired at the region of Zaporizhzhia 564 times, Ukraine said according to The Kyiv Independent, targeting nine settlements.

Two men were killed and one was injured in the region, the local military administration announced.

One person was killed and 15 injured in the Kherson region after Russia targeted nine settlements, according to Governor Oleksandr Prokudin.

Four were injured in the Donetsk region, three in Dnipropetrovsk, and one in Kharkiv, their local administrations reported.

One person was also injured with shrapnel wounds from Russian drone debris in the capital of Kyiv.

President Volodymyr Zelensky took to X, formerly Twitter, to provide an update on Ukraine’s drone capabilities.

“Our Ukrainian Defense and Security Forces are already gaining an advantage in this area – in July, our soldiers deployed more drones than the occupiers,” Zelensky wrote yesterday.

He says Ukraine has contracted the production of one million drones, with more to come next year.

In a video update which accompanied yesterday’s message, Zelensky said the rescue effort after shelling in central Kharkiv is still underway, with some believed to still be trapped under the rubble.

Russia’s air defence systems destroyed 11 drones that Ukraine launched overnight targeting Russia’s Kursk, Voronezh, Belgorod and Rostov regions, the Russia’s defence ministry said.

In a powerful response to Moscow’s invasion, Kyiv kept up air attacks on Russia’s Kursk border region this morning, according to the Russian defence ministry.

Official Russian social media accounts said up to 300 Ukrainian fighters, backed by tanks, had attacked border units in two localities in Kursk – Nikolayevo-Daryino and Oleshnya.

Russian defence systems destroying four drones overnight, the ministry claimed, just a day after Moscow accused Ukraine of targeting the area with an armoured assault.

The ministry had sent reserves on Tuesday to help repel hundreds of Ukrainian fighters backed by tanks from Kursk, in a ground incursion shaping as one the largest into Russian territory during the war, now more than two years old.

The situation was “controllable”, claimed Alexei Smirnov, the acting governor of the southwestern Russian region.

All emergency services were on “high alert”, he said on Wednesday, calling for people to donate blood to replenish medical supplies.

The region was under a dozen air raid alerts over yesterday, Smirnov’s posts showed. By this morning, there were no reports of fresh ground fighting.

Five people were killed, including two ambulance crew, with at least 20 wounded, among them six children, in the fighting that erupted yesterday, Russian officials said.

Ukraine made no official comment, though there was evidence of some military action from its side of the border. Both Kyiv and Moscow say their attacks do not target civilians.

Ukraine regularly fires artillery and missiles into Russian territory, and has hit targets deep inside Russia with long-range attack drones, but infantry raids are rare.

The Russian health ministry claims that 24 people, including six children, were wounded after shelling in the Kursk region where Moscow accused Ukraine of launching a border attack a day earlier.

Kyiv kept up air attacks near the border on Wednesday, with Russian defence systems destroying four drones overnight, the Interfax news agency cited the ministry as saying.