Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said his country’s forces are continuing to advance into Russian territory after their surprise offensive, as a Kyiv said it had launched a “major” drone attack on four Russian airbases, Ednews informs via The Guardian.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s troops had advanced several kilometres in the largest attack on Russia since the second world war. Ukraine also claimed to have shot down a Russian Su-34 jet overnight in the Kursk region, where it said it had also captured 100 Russian prisoners.

The claims of the drone strike targeting airbases appeared to be confirmed by Russia, which said it had downed 117 incoming Ukrainian drones overnight.

On Tuesday Zelenskiy had said Ukraine “controlled” 74 Russian settlements, although it was unclear whether or not that meant they were fully occupied by Ukrainian troops.

“Now all of us in Ukraine should act as unitedly and efficiently as we did in the first weeks and months of this war, when Ukraine took the initiative and began to turn the situation to the benefit of our state,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly address on Tuesday. “Now we have done the exact same thing – we have proven once again that we, Ukrainians, are capable of achieving our goals in any situation – capable of defending our interests and our independence,” he said.

Ukraine’s state television on Wednesday aired footage of its troops pulling down a Russian flag from an official building in the town of Sudzha in the Kursk region. The report showed burnt-out Russian military columns on roads in the area as well as Ukrainian soldiers handing out humanitarian aid to residents and taking down Russian flags from an administrative building.