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Russian forces have launched an attack on Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region as Moscow aims to take advantage of its superior weaponry and manpower before the arrival of more US military aid.
Kyiv’s defence ministry said Russian armoured units attempted to break through Ukrainian defensive lines early on Friday after conducting artillery and air strikes around Vovchansk, a town 70km north-east of Kharkiv city.
“As of now, these attacks have been repelled; battles of varying intensity continue,” the ministry said on the social media platform X. “Reserve units have been deployed to strengthen the defence in this area. The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to hold back the enemy’s offensive.”
Commenting on the Russian attack, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “Ukraine met them there with our troops, brigades and artillery. It is important that they can increase and pull up more forces in this direction, but our military, our command knew about this and calculated their forces to meet the enemy with fire. Now there is a fierce battle in this direction.”
Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Kharkiv region, said “unsuccessful attempts by sabotage and reconnaissance groups to break through the line” followed a nightlong bombardment of the area with artillery and glide bombs.
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Ukrainian officials and western analysts have anticipated for some weeks that Russian forces could launch an offensive across the border into the Kharkiv or Sumy regions of Ukraine. Until now, Russia has concentrated its offensives in the eastern Donetsk region, particularly around the strategically important town of Chasiv Yar.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, told reporters Russia was likely to increase the “intensity” of its operations near Kharkiv, in an attempt to create a “shallow buffer zone” along the Ukrainian border with Russia.
While Moscow had some advantages because of the lapse in US funding for Ukraine earlier in the year, he said he did not expect it to make any “breakthroughs” now that US military aid was flowing again, and predicted Ukraine would “withstand” Russian attacks this year.
A Ukrainian military official told the Financial Times on Wednesday that Russia was preparing for offensives along the north-eastern frontline in order to draw Ukrainian forces away from Donetsk where, heavily outgunned and outmanned, they are struggling to hold their defensive lines. Parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, collectively known as the Donbas, have been occupied since 2014.
Major General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence service, told The Economist last week that Russia had 35,000 troops from its northern grouping based across the border from Kharkiv and was looking to increase the number to up to 50,000. He said this would not be sufficient to seize Kharkiv but could enable Moscow to conduct a “quick operation to come in and out”.
Analysts said a Russian offensive of this kind would be either intended to create a buffer zone along the border or as a “fixing operation” intended to force Ukraine to divert forces from its main defensive effort in the Donbas region.
Frontelligence, an analytical group run by a former Ukrainian officer, said Russian forces had crossed the border near the Ukrainian village of Strilecha, west of Vovchansk, and had seized a number of settlements nearby.
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“It’s an anticipated manoeuvre to divert Ukrainian resources from the main Russian offensive in Donbas. Considering manpower shortages, Ukraine will be forced to redeploy some personnel,” the group posted on X.
Russian forces would likely “deploy more units to penetrate additional border areas or to reinforce initial successes” but had not yet breached Ukraine’s main line of defence, which sits further back from the frontier, it added.
Russian is likely trying to exploit the lag between US Congressional approval of $61bn of aid for Ukraine last month and US weaponry and ammunition reaching the frontlines.
There have also been delays in European supplies. Czech President Petr Pavel earlier this week said an emergency consignment of artillery munitions crowd-funded by EU countries was now due to arrive in Ukraine in June. Czech-led procurement efforts had been delayed by Russian “countermeasures”, he told Germany’s ARD television.
Ukraine is also due to expand its mobilisation efforts to raise more soldiers for its armed forces, with new laws coming into effect later this month.
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