Ukraine
Forces ‘on back foot’ after assault on Kharkiv, says senior military commander
Ukraine’s top military commander admitted yesterday that the situation in Kharkiv was “difficult” as Russian forces continued an assault in the region and Moscow claimed to have captured several more villages.
Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi denied the Russians had made a significant breakthrough but said his forces were on the back foot. “[We] are fighting fierce defensive battles, the attempts of the Russian invaders to break through our defences have been stopped,” he wrote on Telegram.
Ukrainian forces are on the defensive amid shortages of manpower and weapons, and delays in western funding. Analysts have warned of an impending Russian offensive for weeks and the first moves came on Friday with a push around Kharkiv.
“The situation is difficult, but the defence forces of Ukraine are doing everything to hold defensive lines and positions, and inflict damage on the enemy,” added Syrskyi, who was appointed as the army commander in February.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said on Saturday that previous Russian claims to have captured four villages appeared to be accurate and described the recent gains as “tactically significant”. Yesterday Russia claimed to have taken control of another five villages.
The foreign secretary, David Cameron, said the assault was an “extremely dangerous” moment in the war.
The Russian offensive may require Ukraine to reposition troops to the northern front just as Russian forces are also attacking in the south and east of the country. Russian military bloggers said Moscow’s troops were looking to seize a window of opportunity, pressing Ukraine back after a delay in western aid arriving.
Vovchansk, which before the war had a population of 17,000, was under sustained attack. Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said Russian troops were on the outskirts of the town and approaching it from three directions.
Tymoshko said Russia was combining aerial assaults with waves of infantry attacks, similar tactics to those that had been used in Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, which eventually succeeded but involved the destruction of much of the cities in the process.
Oleh Syniehubov, the governor of the Kharkiv region, said Vovchansk was under “permanent” Russian fire. He said about 4,000 people had been evacuated from areas under fire over the past two days, but there were still about 500 people in the town. “We call on residents to save their lives and leave the areas which are being shelled by the enemy,” he said.
Kharkiv is Ukraine’s second largest city, with a population of more than a million. In the early stages of the invasion in spring 2022, Russian forces reached Kharkiv’s suburbs but were driven back to the surrounding region. Later in the year, a Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed them back to the Russian border and in recent months Ukraine has intensified shelling across the border.
Most analysts believe Russia does not have the capacity to seize the city but may instead focus on intensifying strikes on it to make it unliveable, as well as to draw Ukrainian forces away from other parts of the frontline.
Moscow may also be trying to minimise Ukraine’s capacity to strike across the border. In March, units of exiled Russians fighting for Ukraine made a cross-border raid into the Kursk and Belgorod regions, while Ukraine in recent months has stepped up artillery and rocket attacks on targets inside Russia.
Yesterday Russian authorities said at least 13 people were killed and 20 injured when a section of an apartment block collapsed in Belgorod, the nearest major Russian city to Kharkiv. Footage showed a section taken out of the building about 10 storeys high. During a rescue operation, part of the roof fell, causing panic among rescuers and bystanders as clouds of dust spread from the ruins.
Russian officials claimed the damage came when an air defence system shot down a Ukrainian missile. The defence ministry called it a “terrorist attack on residential areas”. Ukrainian authorities have not commented.
The mood in Kyiv has remained bleak in recent months, as the army struggles to overcome Russia’s superior troop numbers and a shortage of weapons. Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the priority was now to halt Russia’s offensive in the Kharkiv region.