MOSCOW (Reuters) – Authorities in Russia’s western Kursk region have begun installing concrete shelters to help protect civilians amid an ongoing Ukrainian incursion, the acting regional governor said on Thursday.
Russian forces have been fighting Ukrainian troops in Kursk, which borders Ukraine, since Aug. 6, when thousands of Kyiv’s troops smashed through the border, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people.
“On my instructions, the administration of the city of Kursk has identified key points for the placement of concrete modular shelters – in crowded places,” Acting Governor Alexei Smirnov wrote on Telegram. Some 60 bus stations would be equipped with the shelters, he said.
Smirnov published a photograph of one of the concrete structures being delivered by truck. The city of Kursk has a population of around 450,000 people.
The governor said the shelters would be erected in two other towns, Zheleznogorsk and Kurchatov. The latter is home to the Kursk nuclear power plant, which Russia has accused Ukraine of planning to attack, something Kyiv has denied.
Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is scheduled to visit the plant at the end of August.
Separately, a Russian official said on Thursday that Moscow’s forces had prevented Ukrainian troops from piercing the border in the western Bryansk region, about 240 km (150 miles) from the site of the battles in Kursk.
Meanwhile, Russian forces are pressing ahead with their own offensive in eastern Ukraine as they seek to take full control of the Donetsk region.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Andrew Osborn)
