Ukrainian troops successfully repelled an attack by Russian special forces who used a gas pipeline to infiltrate the outskirts of Sudzha in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, Ukraine’s General Staff reported on Saturday.
Ukrainian military sources and Russian pro-Kremlin war bloggers said the Russian special forces traveled approximately 9 miles inside the gas pipeline—formerly used to transport gas to Europe—before emerging near Sudzha.
Russian soldiers carrying water walk through a pipeline reportedly leading to Sudzha. https://t.co/RO0nwJRs6D pic.twitter.com/0tELtT4YJH
— Status-6 (Military & Conflict News) (BlueSky too) (@Archer83Able) March 8, 2025
Anton Gerashchenko, current official advisor and a former deputy minister at the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs said Russian operatives spent days inside the pipeline and some have suffocated to death or got methane poisoning from residual gas in the pipe.
As they launched a rear assault on Ukrainian units near Sudzha, the Russian forces were targeted by Ukrainian rocket, artillery, and drone strikes.
“The enemy has suffered significant losses in Sudzha,” the general staff reported.
After the first unverified reports that Russians used a defunct gas pipeline to infiltrate Sudzha, and were subsequently crushed by Ukrainian forces, Z-bloggers are now openly criticizing the operation as another failure of the Russian military:
◾️Reportedly, the Russian command… https://t.co/HGmGjW2ZOw pic.twitter.com/YonxnEGQNd
— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) March 9, 2025
Ukraine’s General Staff also reported that Ukrainian forces had repelled 44 Russian attacks in Kursk Oblast over the past day.
Meanwhile, Russian Defense Ministry statements claimed that its troops had captured multiple villages north and northwest of Sudzha, bringing them within approximately 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) of the town’s center.
Pro-Russian sources, including a blogger known as “Two Majors,” reported that heavy fighting was underway inside Sudzha following the Russian special forces’ pipeline maneuver.
Several reports claim that Ukraine’s position in Kursk has worsened after the U.S. paused its intelligence aid to the country. According to a Time Magazine report citing five senior Western and Ukrainian officials, the decision of the U.S. to stop intelligence aid resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers in recent days.
According to the Institute of the Study of War (ISW), a complete cessation of US intelligence sharing would “severely undermine” Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against Russian offensive operations.
Based on geolocated footage published by ISW, Russian forces are dismantling the northern part of the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast after several days of intensified activity in the region.
NEW: Russian forces are collapsing the northern part of the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast following several days of intensified Russian activity in the area.
The temporal correlation between the suspension of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the start of Russia’s… pic.twitter.com/kmvrBihrg9
— Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar) March 10, 2025
According to ISW, Russian forces have already captured Novaya Sorochina (northwest of Sudzha), Malaya Loknya (just south of Novaya Sorochina), and Lebedevka (south of Malaya Loknya), along with the fields between these settlements.
