Ukraine war: Russians pull back troops

Russia’s defence ministry said it was pulling back forces from two areas in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region where a Ukrainian counter-offensive has made significant advances in the past week.

Defence spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the troops would be regrouped from the Balakliya and Izyum areas to the Donetsk region. Izyum was a major base for Russian forces in Kharkiv.

Konashenkov said that the move was being made “in order to achieve the stated goals of the special military operation to liberate Donbas,” one of the eastern Ukraine regions that Russia has declared sovereign.

The claim of a pull back to concentrate on Donetsk is similar to the justification Russia gave for pulling back its forces from the Kyiv region earlier this year.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that more than 30 settlements had been “liberated” in the Kharkiv region. Western defence officials and analysts said yesterday that they believed Ukraine had punched through Russian lines south of the country’s second-largest city, taking thousands of square miles of territory and threatening to cut off Russian supply lines.

The UK Ministry of Defence said it believed the Ukrainians had gained as much as 30 miles in the advance south of Kharkiv in north-eastern Ukraine.

The advance appears to be around Izyum, which has long been a focus on the Russian frontline and the site of heavy artillery bombardment and other fighting.