Tag: russia ukraine war

General Syrskii says situation in northeastern oblast ‘significantly worsened’ this week as Russian forces continue to advance.

Ukraine’s military chief has admitted his forces are facing a “difficult situation” in the northeastern region of Kharkiv, where thousands more people have fled their homes as Russian forces continue to advance.

“This week, the situation in the Kharkiv region has significantly worsened,” Oleksandr Syrskii wrote on Telegram on Sunday. “There are ongoing battles in the border areas along the state border with the Russian Federation.”

While admitting that the situation is “difficult” and Russian attackers had achieved “partial successes” in some areas, he said, “Ukrainian defence forces are doing everything they can to hold defensive lines and positions.”

The intense battles have forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw, leaving behind more land to Russian forces across less defended settlements in the so-called contested “grey zone” along the Russian border.

By Sunday afternoon, the town of Vovchansk, among the largest in the northeast with a pre-war population of 17,000, emerged as a focal point in the battle.

Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said Russian forces were on the outskirts of the town and were approaching from three directions. “Infantry fighting is already taking place,” he said. A Russian tank was spotted along a major road leading to the town, Tymoshko said, illustrating Moscow’s confidence to deploy heavy weaponry.

Evacuation teams worked non-stop throughout the day to take residents, most of whom were elderly, out of harm’s way.

At least 4,000 civilians have fled the Kharkiv region since Friday when Moscow’s forces launched the operation, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a social media statement. Heavy fighting raged Sunday along the northeast front line, where Russian forces attacked 27 settlements in 24 hours, he said.

The Russian Ministry of Defence said Sunday that its forces had captured four villages on the border in addition to five villages reported to have been seized on Saturday. These areas were likely poorly fortified due to the dynamic fighting and constant heavy shelling, easing the Russian advance.

Ukraine’s leadership has not confirmed Moscow’s gains. But Tymoshko said Strilecha, Pylna and Borsivika were under Russian occupation and it was from their direction the Russians were bringing in infantry to stage attacks in the embattled villages of Hlyboke and Lukiantsi.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that there were intense battles across parts of the region.

“Defensive battles and fierce fighting continue on a large part of our borderline,” Zelenskyy said, adding: “The idea behind the attacks in the Kharkiv region is to stretch our forces and undermine the moral and motivational basis of the Ukrainians’ ability to defend themselves.”

The gains are “significant not just because of the territory but also because in 10km (6 miles) or so they will be at a shelling distance of Kharkiv city, the second largest city in Ukraine,” Al Jazeera’s John Holman said, reporting from the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

“It also means that Ukraine is so stretched paper thin on different sides of the front, and it will probably have to divert soldiers from other areas and send them to the Kharkiv region,” he added.

Analysts said the Russian push is designed to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front lines. Ukrainian soldiers said the Kremlin is using the usual Russian tactic by launching a disproportionate amount of fire and infantry assaults to exhaust their troops and firepower.

By intensifying battles in what was previously a static patch of the front line, Russian forces threaten to pin Ukrainian forces in the northeast while carrying out intense battles farther south, where Moscow is also gaining ground.

The advance comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March, targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted was a concerted effort to shape conditions for an offensive.

Russian regional governor accuses Ukraine of shelling residential building in Belgorod city, near the border with Ukraine.

At least six people have been killed and 20 others injured after a building collapsed in the Russian border city of Belgorod, according to Russian officials.

A video released by the Russian Ministry of Civil Defence, Emergencies and Disaster Relief on Sunday showed firefighters and rescuers working on a huge pile of rubble. The ministry said that six bodies had been recovered from the rubble.

“The number of injured, according to the latest data, is 20 people,” emergency services were quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency TASS.

Earlier, the Emergencies Ministry said that 12 people, including two children, were rescued from the site.

Belgorod governor Vyacheslav Gladkov posted a video to Telegram showing a collapsed building with a large hole in it.

“Following direct shell fire on a residential building… the entire entrance, from the tenth to the ground floor, collapsed,” Gladkov said, condemning “massive bombings” by the Ukrainian army.

There was no immediate comment from Ukraine’s military.

One resident told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti she was in a building corridor and her husband was in a bedroom when the explosion hit.

“He did not have the time [to escape],” she said, adding that her husband had been injured in the head and face.

Air raid alerts continued across Belgorod as rescuers worked, looking for victims in the rubble.

The Russian Ministry of Defence later wrote on social media that the building had been damaged by fragments of a downed Tochka-U TRC missile. It also said that air defences had shot down several more rockets over the Belgorod region, as well as two drones that were destroyed in a separate incident.

The Belgorod region, on Russia’s western border, has been the target of a large number of strikes.

Although most cross-border shelling is seen in rural areas, attacks have also been seen on the Belgorod region’s capital, Belgorod city, which came under fire on Saturday evening, killing one person and injuring 29 more, Governor Gladkov said on social media. In December 2023, shelling in the heart of the city killed 25 people, prompting authorities to start erecting public shelters.

Cities across western Russia have come under regular attack from drones since May 2023, with Russian officials blaming Kyiv.

Ukrainian officials have not acknowledged responsibility for attacks on Russian territory or on the Crimean Peninsula.

As the war enters its 808th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Sunday, May 12, 2024.

Fighting

• A missile attack on a restaurant in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, killed three people and wounded eight, Denis Pushilin, the head of the region’s Russian-backed administration, said, adding that there were two strikes by US HIMARS precision rocket launchers.
• One woman was killed, 29 people wounded and hundreds of buildings, including a school and a hospital, were damaged after Ukraine attacked Russia’s Belgorod region over the weekend, according to regional Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov.
• Gladkov said Belgorod city, the region’s administrative centre, faced further risk of Ukrainian attack, with the entire region under air raid alerts on Sunday.

• The Russian Ministry of Defence says its air defence forces destroyed two Soviet-era conventional ballistic missiles launched overnight by Ukrainian forces over Belgorod.

• Fierce fighting raged overnight on the fringes of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region as Moscow claimed it had captured five villages and was advancing in the Donetsk region. However, Kyiv said it was repulsing the attacks and battling for control of the settlements.

• President Volodymyr Zelenskyy admitted in his nightly video address that battles were going on around seven border villages in Kharkiv and called the situation in the southern Donetsk region “extremely difficult”.
• Kharkiv regional Governor Oleg Synegubov said more than 1,700 people evacuated from areas near the Russian border, as Moscow launched a surprise ground offensive in the region.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was giving extra duties to two key government officials overseeing the defence industry and energy sectors, as the Kremlin chief girds the world’s second-largest oil exporter for a longer war in Ukraine.
• Incumbent Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, a staunch supporter of Ukraine, and his closest opponent, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, promise to stand up to Russian threat at home, as the country heads to the polls on Sunday. Voters in the Baltic state are worried that the country could be a target of Russian aggression.

• Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Ukrainians with a residence permit and work in Germany could stay even as Ukraine seeks to recruit nationals living abroad to serve in the war against Russia.

Moscow’s forces captured five villages in a renewed ground assault in northeastern Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence has said, as journalists in the city of Vovchansk described multiple buildings destroyed after Russian air raids.

Ukrainian officials on Saturday did not confirm whether Russia had taken the villages, which lie in a contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia.

Ukrainian journalists reported that the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha were taken by Russian troops on Friday.

Russia said the village of Pletenivka was also taken.

In an evening statement Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said fighting was continuing in Strilecha and Pletenivka, as well as Krasne, Morokhovets, Oliinykove, Lukyantsi and Hatyshche.

“Our troops are carrying out counterattacks there for a second day, protecting Ukrainian territory,” he said.

On Friday, the Institute for the Study of War said that geolocated footage confirms at least one of the villages was seized. The Washington-based think tank described recent Russian gains as “tactically significant”.

The renewed assault on the region has forced more than 1,700 civilians residing in settlements near the fighting to flee, according to Ukrainian authorities. It comes after Russia stepped up attacks in March targeting energy infrastructure and settlements, which analysts predicted were a concerted effort by Moscow to shape conditions for an offensive.

On Saturday, Russia continued to pummel Vovchansk with air raids and rockets as police and volunteers raced to evacuate residents. At least 20 people were evacuated to safety in a nearby village. Police said that 900 people had been evacuated the previous day.

Journalists from The Associated Press news agency who accompanied an evacuation team described empty streets with multiple buildings destroyed and others on fire. The road was littered with newly made craters and the city was covered in dust and shrapnel with the smell of gunpowder heavy in the air. Mushroom clouds of smoke rose across the skyline as Russian jets conducted multiple air attacks.

The AP journalists witnessed nine air attacks during the three hours they were there.

“The situation in Vovchansk and the settlements along the border [with Russia] is incredibly difficult. Constant aviation attacks are carried out, multiple rocket missile systems strikes, artillery strikes,” said Tamaz Hambarashvili, the head of the Vovchansk military administration.

“For the second day in a row, we evacuated all the inhabitants of our community who are willing to evacuate,” he said.

“I think that they are destroying the city to make [local] people leave, to make sure there are no militaries, nobody. To create a ‘grey’ zone.’”

Russia’s recent push in Kharkiv seeks to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line and pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast and keep them away from heavy battles under way in the Donetsk region where Moscow’s troops are gaining ground, analysts said.

Russian military bloggers said the assault could mark the start of a Russian attempt to carve out a “buffer zone” that President Vladimir Putin pledged to create earlier this year to halt frequent Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian border regions.

The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that one woman was killed and 29 people were wounded, including a child, in shelling by Ukraine’s armed forces.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials have downplayed Russian statements about captured territory, with reinforcements being rushed to the Kharkiv region to hold off Russian forces.

On Telegram, Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said that heavy fighting continued in the areas around Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Oliinykove, but that the situation was under control and there was no threat of a ground assault on the city of Kharkiv.

In the meantime, artillery, mortar and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 different towns and villages in the region on Saturday, killing at least three people and injuring five others, Syniehubov said.

As the war enters its 807th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Saturday, May 11, 2024.

Fighting

• Ukrainian strikes have killed three people and caused a large fire at an oil storage depot in Luhansk, the region’s Russia-installed governor, Leonid Pasechnik, has said in a Telegram message. Eight people were hospitalised.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he will quash a new major Russian ground assault in the northeastern Kharkiv region, as he acknowledged the latest “heavy battles along the entire front line”, and appealed to Western allies to deliver more military aid.

• Ukrainian reinforcements have headed to Kharkiv, launched artillery and drone counterstrikes in response to the latest Russian offensive, while the authorities told civilians to flee the heavy fighting.
• General Oleksandr Pavliuk, commander of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, has played down the significance of possibly losing the eastern town of Chasiv Yar, which is described as a gateway to other cities that Russia is targeting, like Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
• Hundreds of people in Ukraine’s city of Vinnytsia have bid their final farewell to Nazary Gryntsevych, a member of the Azov Brigade who had become a national hero and symbol of bravery after fighting Russian forces despite the fall of Mariupol.

Diplomacy and politics

• White House National Security spokesperson John Kirby has said the United States expects Russia to intensify its new offensive and commit additional troops, with the aim of establishing a buffer zone along the Ukrainian border.
• “It is possible that Russia will make further advances in the coming weeks, but we do not anticipate any major breakthroughs,” Kirby said. “And over time, the influx of US assistance will enable Ukraine to withstand these attacks over the course of 2024.”
• The US has announced a new $400m military aid package – including armoured vehicles, surface-to-air missiles and rockets – for Ukraine amid the Russian assault in the northeast of the country. It is the third package for Ukraine in less than three weeks, following two in late April valued at a total of $7bn.
• Poland’s central bank governor,  Adam Glapinski, has warned that his country faces further economic risks if the war in Ukraine comes closer to its borders.
• Canadian Defence Minister Bill Blair has announced a $76m Canadian dollar ($56m) financial package that would allow Germany to ramp up its air defence aid for Ukraine.

• Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has declared that the aim of nuclear exercises planned by Russia is to work out the response to any attacks on Russian soil. Medvedev, who is now deputy chairman of Russia’s security council, warns the West that Russia could attack not only Ukraine in response to such attacks.