Russian special forces strike Ukrainian troops in Kursk through a gas pipeline, according to bloggers.
New Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 9th March 2025
Pro-Russian war bloggers reported that Russian special forces stealthily advanced several miles along a major gas pipeline close to the town of Sudzha, aiming to catch Ukrainian forces off guard during a significant offensive to drive Ukrainian troops out of the western Russian region of Kursk.
In August of the previous year, thousands of Ukrainian troops captured approximately 1,300 square kilometers of Russia’s Kursk region, which Kyiv claimed was an effort to secure leverage for upcoming negotiations and to compel Russia to redeploy its troops from eastern Ukraine.
In recent days, Russia has intensified its offensive with some effectiveness, as open-source maps on Friday indicated that Kyiv’s forces in Kursk are almost encircled following swift Russian progress.
In 2024, Russian progress and U.S. President Donald Trump’s reversal of U.S. policy regarding Ukraine and Russia have raised concerns among European leaders that Ukraine may lose the conflict and that Trump is abandoning Europe.
This month, the United States halted military assistance and intelligence sharing with Ukraine following a February 28 meeting that turned contentious between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in front of global media.
In its daily briefing regarding the situation in Kursk, Russia’s Defence Ministry announced that its troops had recaptured the village of Lebedevka and also taken Novenke, a small settlement located just over the border in Ukraine’s Sumy region.
Yuri Podolyaka, a military blogger from Ukraine who supports Russia, reported that Russian special forces had traversed several miles within a significant gas pipeline, with some personnel reportedly spending days inside the pipe before ambushing Ukrainian troops from behind near Sudzha. Sudzha hosts key gas transfer and measurement facilities on a pipeline that previously transported Russian natural gas into the Ukrainian gas transmission network for further distribution to Europe.
