Ukraine war live: Towns evacuated after Moscow seizes territory ahead of possible new offensive

A bridge has collapsed in the Russian Bryansk region that borders Ukraine causing a traffic accident that involved a passenger train, the regional governor said early on Sunday.

“Unfortunately, there are injuries,” Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Bryansk, said on the Telegram messaging app.

He added that the collapse took place in the Vygonichskyi district in the area of a federal highway.

Russia’s Baza and SHOT Telegram channels, which often publish information from sources in the security services and law enforcement, reported that the passenger train crashed into the collapsed bridge.

Baza reported, without providing evidence, that according to preliminary information, the bridge was blown up.

Reuters could not independently verify the Baza and SHOT reports. There was no immediate comment from Ukraine.

Since the start of the war that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion on Ukraine more than three years ago, there have been continued cross-border shelling, drone strikes, and covert raids from Ukraine into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions that border Ukraine.

Russia’s emergency ministry said on Telegram that it sent an additional deployment to the fire and rescue units already working at the site

A dozen Russian soldiers were awarded about $195,000 each for shooting down an F-16 fighter jet in Ukraine, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.

Ukraine’s Air Force in late August last year confirmed that a pilot had been killed during Russia’s mass attack, which shot down one of the US-delivered F-16 jets.

“Forces has delivered on its earlier promise to transfer 15 million rubles to members of the Russian Armed Forces for downing the first F-16 in the special military operation zone,” the company said.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Saturday that it had gained control of the Ukrainian village of Novopil in the Donetsk region, and took the village of Vodolahy in the northern Sumy region. Ukrainian authorities in Sumy ordered mandatory evacuations in 11 more settlements as Russian forces make steady gains in the area.

The new additions bring the total number of settlements under evacuation orders in Sumy, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, to 213.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said some 50,000 Russian troops have amassed in the area with the intention of launching an offensive to carve out a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.

Speaking Saturday, Ukraine’s top army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that Russian forces were focusing their main offensive efforts on Pokrovsk, Torets and Lyman in the Donetsk region, as well as the Sumy border area.

Syrskyi also said Ukrainian forces are still holding territory in Russia’s Kursk region, a statement that Moscow has repeatedly denied. Russia said on April 26 that it had pushed all Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region after Ukrainian troops seized land there during a surprise incursion in August 2024. “The enemy is holding its best units here,” Syrskyi said referring to Kursk, “which it planned to use in the east.”

Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz will travel to Washington to meet on Thursday with US president Donald Trump, a German government spokesman said on Saturday.

This will be Mr Merz’s first visit to the United States since taking office on May 6, and comes amid high tensions between the trans-Atlantic partners over trade and the Ukraine war.

Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine killed at least two people, including a 9-year-old girl, officials said.

Russian troops launched some 109 drones and five missiles across Ukraine overnight and into Saturday, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Three of the missiles and 42 drones were destroyed and another 30 drones failed to reach their targets without causing damage, it said.

The girl was killed in a strike on the front-line village of Dolynka in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a 16-year-old was injured, Zaporizhzhia’s Gov. Ivan Fedorov said.

A man was killed by Russian shelling in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin wrote on Telegram.

Moscow did not comment on either attack.

Ukraine has issued evacuation orders for 11 more villages in the northeastern Sumy region amid fears that Russia may launch a new offensive.

“(Russia) continues its terror of the borderlands, and our shared task is to save every life,” regional governor Oleh Hryhorov said in a statement. “I urge residents not to delay the decision to evacuate. Staying in a zone of constant danger is a direct threat to your life and health.”

It brings the total number of mandatory evacuation orders in the region to 213.

The move comes amid fears of a potential new Russian offensive being opened in the northeast. A State Border Guard Service spokesperson said on Thursday that Russia had amassed “sufficient forces” in the neighbouring Kursk region to launch an incursion, the Kyiv Independent reported.

Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier said Moscow is concentrating 50,000 troops near Sumy region in preparation for a new offensive.