Hello and welcome to News Hour live from the BBC World Service in London.

I'm Rebecca Keesby.

It's difficult to know exactly how much Russian territory Ukrainian troops now occupy in Kusk.

Kyiv insists it's continuing its advance.

The Army Chief Alexander Seski says his forces now have full control of the Bordessau town of

Sudja and President Zelensky says Ukrainian troops have captured some hundred or so Russian

soldiers. That's disputed though by the

Russians, one commander claiming on state TV today that the Ukrainian advance had

been almost completely blocked by Russian forces.

Tonight Ukraine's deputy prime minister announced that humanitarian corridors would be set up in Kusk

to allow Russian civilians to escape either further into Russia or into Ukraine.

Well if you were listening to the program yesterday you'll know we heard from Nikita,

a Russian living in exile whose family are in the Kursk region.

He was telling us how difficult it's been to get information because civilians, including

his friends and family, are too scared to speak, but we have now managed to speak to somebody in the regional capital,

Kursk City.

Jan Fertsev is a local official with the Liberal opposition party Yablocco and he's been involved in helping people

who've been evacuated from areas under Ukrainian control and my colleague James Komarasami

asked him to describe the current situation in the region.

The current situation in Kursk is tense.

Kursk is of course the administrative center or the regional

capital and there's a large number of people coming from the affected regions, the if regions in the conflict zone,

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