Thousands flee as Russians launch ground onslaught

● Waves of air and rocket attacks hit city but Ukrainian drones kill five in Belgorod

Russian forces have captured five villages as part of a renewed ground assault in Ukraine’s north east, the country’s defence ministry said. Ukrainian journalists reported on Friday that Russian troops had taken the villages of Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha, all of which are in a militarily contested “grey zone” on the border of Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and Russia.

Moscow said another village, Pletenivka, had been captured in a renewed attack on the region that Ukrainian authorities said forced more than 1,700 civilians to flee.

Russian forces continued to pummel the nearby city of Vovchansk with air strikes and grad rockets yesterday as police and volunteers raced to evacuate residents.

Empty streets with multiple buildings destroyed and others on fire were reported.

Clouds of smoke rose across the skyline as Russian jets conducted multiple air strikes.

Police said they had evacuated 900 people from the city on Friday.

Artillery, mortar and aerial bombardments hit more than 30 towns and villages, killing at least three people and injuring five others, said Kharkiv governor Oleh Syniehubov.

Ukraine rushed reinforcements to the Kharkiv region on Friday to hold off a Russian attempt to breach local defences, authorities said.

Meanwhile, five people were killed and nine wounded in three separate Ukrainian drone and artillery strikes on the Russian border provinces of Belgorod and Kursk, and the city of Donetsk, which Russia claims to have annexed, local officials said yesterday.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of east Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said in a statement posted on Telegram that three civilians had been killed and eight more injured when a Ukrainian missile struck a restaurant in city.

Donetsk, which fell under the control of Russian-backed separatists in 2014, regularly came under Ukrainian shelling after Moscow ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, but became more secure after Kyiv’s troops were forced from its outskirts earlier this year.

Belgorod regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement on Telegram that one man had been killed and another injured after a Ukrainian drone hit a parked truck in the border village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya.

Another strike set an oil depot on fire in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Luhansk region, killing four people and injuring eight more, said Leonid Pasechnik, the region’s Moscow-installed leader.

Russian forces stepped up their bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in late March. Friday’s attack signalled a tactical switch in the war by Moscow that Ukrainian officials had been expecting for weeks.

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

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed yesterday evening that Russian forces were expanding their operations.

He also called on the country’s western allies to ensure promised deliveries of military aid would swiftly reach the front lines.

“It is critical that partners support our warriors and Ukrainian resilience with timely deliveries. Truly timely ones,” he said.

“A package that truly helps is the actual delivery of weapons to Ukraine, rather than just the announcement of a package.”

The Kremlin’s forces have repeatedly sought to exploit Ukraine’s shortages of ammunition and personnel as the flow of western military aid to Kyiv has tapered off in recent months, with promised new support yet to arrive.

Ukraine previously said Russia was assembling thousands of troops along the north-eastern border, close to the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.

Intelligence officials also said they had expected an attack there though Russia’s most recent ground offensive had been focused on the south east.

In the war’s early days, Russia made a botched attempt to quickly storm Kharkiv but retreated from its outskirts after about a month.

In the autumn of 2022, seven months later, Ukraine’s army pushed them out of Kharkiv. The counter-attack helped persuade western countries that Ukraine could defeat Russia on the battlefield and merited military support.

Package that truly helps is the actual delivery of weapons to Ukraine, rather than just the announcement