Ukrainian forces left a path of destruction in the Kursk operation. AP visited a seized Russian town

A trail of destruction lies in the path that Ukrainian forces carved on their risky incursion into Russia, blasting through the border and eventually into the town of Sudzha, where Associated Press journalists traveled Friday on a Ukrainian government-organized trip.

Artillery fire has blown chunks out of a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin that stands in a central square of the Russian town, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday was fully under his troops’ control. The windows of an administrative building are blasted out, and its bright yellow facade is scorched and pockmarked with bullet holes.