War in Ukraine, day 807 | Russia launches ground offensive in Kharkiv region

(Kyiv) Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region of northeastern Ukraine on Friday and attempted to “break through the defense lines”, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced, saying that the fighting continued.

This area had not been the target of such attacks since the withdrawal of Kremlin troops from almost the entire Kharkiv region in the face of a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the fall of 2022.

While the scale of this new Russian operation is not yet clear, Ukraine has feared an attack in the region for weeks.

According to a highly placed source in the Ukrainian military command, Moscow wants to create a “buffer zone” in the regions of Kharkiv and Sumy to prevent Kyiv from striking the region of Belgorod, in Russia, which is very regularly targeted.

“Over the past day, the enemy carried out airstrikes in the Vovchansk sector”, bordering the Russian region of Belgorod, with guided aerial bombs, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said on Friday.

“Around 5 a.m., the enemy tried to break through our defense lines using armored vehicles,” added the same source, without specifying the exact location of this attack.

The ministry assured that these assaults had been “repulsed” but that “fighting of various intensities” continued and that reserve units had been deployed to “reinforce the defense” of the area.

According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia launched “a new wave of counter-offensive actions” in the Kharkiv region, while assuring that its general staff “knew it” and had “responded to the enemy with fire “.

Civilian evacuations

The local governor, Oleg Synegoubov, maintained Friday afternoon that “all offensive actions” had been repelled and that there was “no loss of territory.”

He nevertheless affirmed, during an interview broadcast on national television, that “active fighting” was taking place “1 or 2 kilometers” from the Russian border.

One civilian was killed and five others injured in Vovchansk during strikes during the morning, he said earlier on Telegram, adding that another civilian was killed in a strike in the northern town of Cherkaski Tychky. from Kharkiv.

The region, whose capital is Kharkiv, the country’s second city, remains a major objective for the Kremlin.

It has been very often bombed in recent months, particularly its energy infrastructure, and Ukraine has been worried for several weeks about a potential new Russian offensive in the area.

Evacuations of civilians have been ordered around Vovchansk, a local official told Ukrainian media Hromadske Radio. According to him, intense shooting hit this city which has 3,000 inhabitants.

Border villages

Ukrainian media Ukrainskaya Pravdaciting anonymous military sources, said Friday afternoon that fighting was taking place in the towns of Striletche, Borysivka, Pylna and Krasné, bordering Russia, as well as those of Gatyshche and Pletenivka.

The Ukrainian military channel DeepState claimed on Telegram that the enemy has “activated” operations in this sector, but that its troops would not allow “deep penetration”.

According to the Rybar Telegram channel, close to the Moscow army, Russian units carried out strikes to “reduce Ukrainian defense capabilities” and “advanced” combat groups began to “clear” the area.

By midday, Rybar’s experts estimated that it was not, for the moment, a large-scale offensive, but rather a “successfully carried out reconnaissance operation”.

Generally speaking, the Ukrainian army is struggling on the front, weakened by a lack of recruits and delays in the delivery of Western aid, which have notably emptied its ammunition stocks.

At the end of April, Washington validated a package of $61 billion in aid, to the great relief of Kyiv, but it will take some time for this assistance to materialize on the battlefield.

Opposite, Russian forces claimed limited territorial gains, mainly in the east, at the cost of heavy human losses, but without achieving any real breakthroughs.

They are seeking in particular to seize the strategic town of Chassiv Iar, in the Donetsk region (East). Ukrainian prosecutors said two civilians were injured there on Friday during a Russian bombing.

According to the same source, two civilians were also killed by an enemy artillery strike in the village of Yelyzavetivka, near the town of Pokrovsk, still in the Donetsk region.

Russia, which benefits from more men, weapons and a more powerful defense industry, regained the initiative after the failure of the Ukrainian offensive in the summer of 2023.