Atesh claims three Kursk comms towers destroyed

Ukrainian partisan group Atesh says it destroyed three communications towers in Russia's Kursk region. In a Telegram post on August 19, the group said its agents hit towers near the villages of Darino, Malaya Loknya, and Sverdlikovo — facilities it described as secure channels tying command posts of occupation units to one another. The account is unconfirmed; Data Center Dynamics, which reported the claim, is drawing on Atesh's post.

Atesh framed the damage in operational terms. Losing several network elements at once broke the exchange of operational information and blocked the transmission of orders, the group said. It singled out the 83rd Separate Guards Airborne Assault Brigade and the 1443rd Motorized Rifle Regiment, saying coordination, information flow, and responses to changing situations were all hampered.

Russian communications infrastructure has been Atesh's target for months. It claimed a strike on a communications facility in the Belgorod region in February and warned then that it would continue; it also said it hit a tower in the Kursk region in January. Atesh was founded in September 2022 by Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars after Russia's invasion and operates in occupied territories.

Neither side has spared communications networks since 2022. Ukrainian drones have hit factories and critical infrastructure, including Operation Spiderweb in June 2024, when drones smuggled into Russia attacked several air bases. Russia has answered drone pressure by switching off internet access, producing 654 intentional mobile data shutdowns in June 2025, according to Data Center Dynamics.

Independent confirmation is absent, but the pattern is plain: both sides treat communication nodes as targets. The February warning and the earlier Kursk claim suggest a deliberate campaign rather than an isolated strike — though none of it proves the towers actually fell.