Russia has launched a ground offensive in northeastern Ukraine. Ukrainian army: first attacks repelled, fighting continues

Russia launched a ground offensive in the Kharkiv region (northeast) on Friday and tried to “break through the Ukrainian defense lines”, announced the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, stating that fighting continues in this sector, reports AFP, taken by Agerpres.

“In the last 24 hours, the enemy carried out airstrikes in the Vovceansk sector,” on the border with the Russian Belgorod region, with aerial guided bombs, the ministry said, adding that, “around 05:00 in the morning, the enemy tried to break through our defense lines with the help of armored vehicles”. Officials from Kiev did not specify the exact place where the attack took place.

The ministry assures that these attacks have been “repelled”, but that “fighting of varying intensity” continues and that “reserve units” have been deployed to “strengthen the defense” of the area.

Thus, Russia is trying to create a “buffer zone” to prevent Ukraine from hitting the Russian region of Belgorod, which has been regularly targeted by Ukrainian gunfire lately, a source in the Ukrainian military command indicated on Friday.

Moscow’s forces “have penetrated one kilometer into Ukrainian territory” near Vovceansk and are trying to advance further, said the same high-ranking source, quoted by Reuters.

The authorities have started to evacuate the population of Vovceansk, where about 3,000 people live, and the neighboring towns in the Kharkiv region because of “massive shelling”, said Tamaz Gambaraşvili, the head of the local military administration.

The assault opens a new front in the war more than two years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. Fighting in the border area of ​​the Kharkiv region continues, and Kiev has sent more forces to the area as reinforcements, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

Another senior Ukrainian military source, who requested anonymity, told Reuters that Russian forces were trying to push Ukrainian troops up to 10 kilometers from the border with Russia, while the Ukrainian military was trying to push them back.

A large part of the Kharkiv region was occupied, then liberated in 2022. The border region and its administrative center of the same name, Ukraine’s second largest city, have been heavily bombed by Russia in recent months.

Ukraine had expressed fears for several weeks about a potential new Russian offensive in this sector of the front.

The Ukrainian army is facing problems on the front, weakened by a lack of recruits and delays in the delivery of Western aid, which have especially depleted its ammunition stocks.

On the opposite side, the Russian forces claimed limited territorial gains, mainly in the east, without making any real progress.

President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed on Friday that the occupiers launched a counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region. The statement was made during a joint press conference with his counterpart from Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova, who is on a visit to Kiev.

Publisher: ML

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