KYIV, March 10 - Russian special forces walked inside a gas pipeline to strike Ukrainian units from the rear in the Kursk region, Ukraine’s military and Russian war bloggers reported, according to The Associated Press.

The Ukrainian units used precision strikes and cluster munitions to destroy most of the Russian forces upon their exit from the pipeline, Ukrainian military bloggers reported. The Russian bloggers did not elaborate on the fate of the special forces, only saying that they are “heroes that must be remembered.”

Ukraine launched a daring cross-border incursion into Kursk in August, marking the largest attack on Russian territory since World War II. Within days, Ukrainian units had captured 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of territory, including the strategic border town of Sudzha, and taken hundreds of Russian prisoners of war.

According to Kyiv, the operation aimed to gain a bargaining chip in future peace talks and to force Russia to divert troops away from its grinding offensive in eastern Ukraine.

But months after Ukraine’s thunder run, its soldiers in Kursk are weary and bloodied by relentless assaults of more than 50,000 troops, including some from Russian ally North Korea. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are at risk of being encircled, open-source maps of the battlefield show.

According to Telegram posts late Saturday by a Ukrainian-born, pro-Kremlin blogger, Russian operatives walked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) inside the pipeline, which Moscow had until recently used to send gas to Europe. Some Russian troops spent several days in the pipe before striking Ukrainian units from the rear near Sudzha, blogger Yuri Podolyaka claimed.

The town had some 5,000 residents before the full-scale February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and it houses major gas transfer and measuring stations along the pipeline, which was once a major outlet for Russian natural gas exports through Ukrainian territory.

Another war blogger, who uses the alias Two Majors, said fierce fighting was underway for Sudzha, and that Russian forces managed to enter the town through a gas pipeline. Russian Telegram channels showed photos of what they said were special forces operatives, wearing gas masks and moving along what looked like the inside of a large pipe.

Ukraine’s General Staff confirmed Saturday evening that Russian “sabotage and assault groups” used the pipeline in a bid to gain a foothold outside Sudzha. In a Telegram post, it said Russian troops were “detected in a timely manner” and that Ukraine responded with rockets and artillery.

“At present, Russian special forces are being detected, blocked and destroyed. The enemy’s losses in Sudzha are very high,” the General Staff reported.

A third Russian war blogger argued that the attacking force lacked the logistical backup to succeed.

“Food, water, ammunition, communications, charging electrical devices, power banks, the approach of the main forces, evacuating the wounded … Two or three groups in the rear without all this — that’s a disaster,” the blogger, who describes himself as a soldier with the call sign Thirteenth, wrote on Telegram.

The Associated Press could not independently verify the accounts.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported Sunday that its troops had taken four villages north and northwest of Sudzha, with the closest lying some 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) from the center of the town. The claim came a day after the ministry reported the capture of three more villages near Sudzha. (ap/ez)