Satellite images show Ukraine's expanding attacks inside Russia

Ukraine’s daring incursion into Russia has been backed by an expanding campaign of aerial attacks on strategic targets — from bridges in the Kursk region, where its ground forces have pressed their surprise assault, to an air base and an oil depot set ablaze deep inside Russian territory.

Kyiv has touted these attacks and its use of U.S. weapons in videos proudly shared on social media. NBC News has geolocated some of those videos, and analyzed satellite images to track the campaign.

‘As many problems as possible’

Last Friday and then on Sunday, Ukraine’s air force shared videos purporting to show at least two strategic bridges blown up over the Seim River in Russia’s southern Kursk border region, which Ukrainian troops invaded in a daring assault more than two weeks ago.

The claims were supported by satellite imagery showing at least one destroyed span near the town of Glushkovo. The destruction of the bridges over the river could isolate Russian forces in the area hoping to halt the Ukrainian advance.

Ukraine initially practiced a strict informational silence about the surprise Kursk operation, which has overturned the status quo of the 2 1/2-year war. But that has since changed, and this week, Ukraine has been advertising its attacks inside Russia.

Having targeted the permanent bridges, Ukraine’s military shared a video Wednesday saying its special forces were using the U.S.-manufactured high-mobility artillery rocket system (HIMARS) to destroy pontoon bridges and engineering equipment in the Kursk region as well — a first official acknowledgement that Kyiv was using Western weapons in the Kursk offensive.

Pontoon bridges are temporary structures that militaries often build to maintain critical supply lines when permanent structures are damaged or destroyed.

NBC News was able to geolocate a segment of the video to a bend on the Seim River several miles from Glushkovo, where a bridge span was hit earlier. NBC News was not able to verify whether the video shows the destruction of a pontoon bridge or when it was shot.

Another video shared Thursday by the country’s air force chief, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleshchuk, claimed to show Ukraine’s use of guided aerial bombs to destroy two “bridge crossings” in Kursk this week. NBC News also geolocated part of that video to an area close to Glushkovo.

The abundance of videos shared by Kyiv in recent days could signal its intention to project confidence over its ability to strike targets and stoke unease inside Russia.

“We must all understand that to drive the occupier from our land, we must create as many problems for the Russian state as possible on its own territory,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday.

And those problems are surely accumulating for the Kremlin.

A diesel depot in the town of Proletarsk in Russia’s southern Rostov region, which borders Ukraine, has been ablaze for days after it was hit by Ukrainian drones on Sunday. More than 500 firefighters have been battling the fire, which at one point spread to over 100,000 square feet, according to Russian state media.

Ukraine claimed responsibility for hitting the depot, which its army’s general staff said stored oil products used to supply the Russian army. Regional Gov. Vasily Golubev blamed the fire — which he said was affecting “warehouses” in Proletarsk, without specifying that a strategic depot was involved — on falling drone debris.

Satellite images captured on Monday, the day after the alleged attack, show flames and thick clouds of black smoke billowing from the depot. Other satellite images showed the blaze still burning on Thursday.

Another case of Ukraine reaching deeper into Russia this week involved an airfield in the southern Volgograd region.

A dramatic video geolocated by NBC News on Thursday showed huge plumes of smoke filling the sky above the air base as explosions are heard in the background.

The region’s governor, Andrei Bocharov, confirmed a fire broke out at a Defense Ministry facility after a drone attack, without specifying the nature of the facility. A Ukrainian security source told NBC News that its military attacked the region’s Marinovka air base, targeting warehouses storing antitank weapons and fuel.

While it’s hard to discern details of the damage to the air base from the satellite imagery, large swaths of what appears to be burned-out land can be seen in the image taken after the alleged attack.

In the latest attack later Thursday, a railway ferry with fuel tanks on board was hit in a port in the southern region of Krasnodar, across from the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Russian officials blamed Kyiv, but Ukraine has so far not claimed responsibility.

Krasnodar Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said the ferry sank as a result of the hit and the resulting fire, adding that booms had been deployed in the water to prevent the spread of fuel. Local emergency officials said one crew member remained missing and 17 were rescued.

The attacks this week and the ongoing incursion appear to have surprised not only Moscow, but also Ukraine’s Western partners.

Yet Washington has maintained so far that it has no issue with Kyiv’s use of its weapons.

Responding to the statement from Ukraine’s military that the U.S.-supplied HIMARS were used in Kursk this week, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Charlie Dietz told NBC News the weapons are being employed from within Ukraine, as far as Washington can tell, and it has not seen them being moved to Kursk or inside Russia.

“Back in May, we gave Ukraine permission to use U.S.-provided munitions, with the exception of ATACMS, to defend themselves against Russian troops north of the border, and that is what Ukraine has said they are doing,” Dietz said.