Ukraine carried out a nighttime drone strike on a Kremlin military airport near the city of Volgograd and announced the capture of another village in Russia’s Kursk region, as Russian forces continued their advance into the Donetsk region.

Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said the attack occurred around 3 a.m. Residents reported a series of explosions. Several hours later, the munitions continued to detonate while a huge cloud of black smoke enveloped the area.

The Ukrainian secret service SBU said it had carried out the long-range attack on the Marinovka air base, 70 km west of Volgograd, near the town of Kalach-on-Don. Around 30 Su-34 and Su-35 fighter jets are stationed at the base.

The planes regularly carry out bombing raids on Ukrainian positions on the front line, about 450 kilometers away, the SBU told the Kyiv Independent newspaper. It is unclear how many jets were damaged or destroyed.

A Russian eyewitness who filmed the destruction said the airfield had been wiped out. “This is a serious tragedy, guys. This is a serious matter. Everything is fucking burning. And there’s fucking smoke. Everything is fucking exploding. That’s all,” he said as the detonations continued.

Ukraine is conducting an increasingly ambitious long-range drone campaign against key Russian infrastructure targets, hitting more than 200 targets including oil depots, refineries and weapons factories. Last week, the campaign hit two air bases: Borisoglebsk, 240 kilometers inside Russia, and Savasleyka, about 640 kilometers away.

On Tuesday, Russia launched a major attack on Moscow, sending drones into the Arctic region of Murmansk, more than 1,000 miles away, where Russian strategic bombers are based. The Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down all enemy unmanned aerial vehicles that had entered its territory.

On Thursday, drones hit a rail ferry carrying fuel tanks in the port of Caucasus, not far from the road and rail bridge that connects the Russian mainland with occupied Crimea. Black smoke rose above the water. Kyiv has announced that it will stop the “illegal” crossing of the Kerch Strait.

The latest drone strikes came as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy traveled to the border area in Sumy province, from where Ukrainian troops made a surprise invasion deep into Russia on August 6. Zelenskyy met with his commander-in-chief, Colonel General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

One goal of the operation is to ease pressure on Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region, where Russian combat units are advancing. So far, however, this has not happened. Instead, Moscow has sent reinforcements from its hinterland and occupied southern Ukraine. It has also increased the pace of attacks around the city of Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian military hub.

In recent months, Russian troops have taken over villages east of Pokrovsk and are now only 11 km away. They have come within 5 km of the neighboring town of Myrnohrad. Residents packed up to leave on Thursday and shops, banks and other organizations closed this week. The mood is said to be calm, although a Russian attack is imminent.

Speaking in the Sumy region, Zelensky said the Ukrainian-controlled “buffer zone” on the Russian side of the border was saving lives. “Since the beginning of the Kursk operation, there has been less artillery shelling and fewer civilian casualties in the Sumy region,” he said. The armed forces had captured another settlement and captured more Russian soldiers, he added.

According to Telegram channels, Ukrainian soldiers have captured the village of Krasno-Oktyabrskoye on the Sejm River. They had previously destroyed three bridges and two pontoon crossings on the same front line with Himars missiles from the USA and bombed the Russian border town of Tetkino further west.

Several thousand Russian troops are currently stranded in the Glushkovsky district south of the river. Ukraine is trying to advance there and expand its 1,250-square-kilometer bridgehead in enemy territory. Videos suggest Russian units are putting up strong resistance, and heavy fighting is taking place in the town of Korenevo and elsewhere.

The Russian secret service FSB has now issued an arrest warrant for journalists working for CNN after they travelled on an assignment to the Russian city of Sudzha, which is under the control of the Ukrainian military. The reporters include Nick Paton-Walsh, CNN’s chief international security correspondent, and two Ukrainian colleagues. Paton-Walsh, a Briton, was the Guardian’s Moscow correspondent in the early 2000s.

Earlier this week, the Kremlin summoned a senior US diplomat to Moscow and complained about “provocative” trips by American journalists to Russian territory.

Overall, Vladimir Putin has downplayed the invasion of Ukraine – the first attack on Russian soil since World War II. At a meeting with the heads of the affected border regions, he spoke about the humanitarian situation without explaining what caused it. More than 122,000 Russians living in the Kursk zone have fled.

Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to Zelensky’s chief of staff, said the Kremlin had deliberately decided to ignore bad news. “The Kremlin is currently unable to counter the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces in the Kursk region. To calm the growing fear among the population, the advance of our army and the loss of territory are presented as the ‘new normal,'” he wrote on X.