A police officer helps local residents during an evacuation to Kharkiv due to Russian shelling, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the town of Vovchansk in Kharkiv region, on May 12.Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Reuters
Russian forces attacking Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region reached the outskirts of the border town of Vovchansk, Kyiv’s troops said on Sunday, as President Volodymyr Zelensky described heavy fighting there and in the east.
Moscow troops smashed into the Kharkiv region on Friday, opening a northeastern front in the 27-month war that has long been waged in the south and east. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, is 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border.
Soldiers returning from a combat mission in the area said the fighting had reached the edges of Vovchansk, a town around 4 km from the border and 45 km from Kharkiv city, describing helping some troops break out of Russian encirclement.
“The town is ours. They (the Russians) are biting on the outskirts, but we are biting back. And we will bite for every metre,” said a Ukrainian soldier.
“Our boys got surrounded. We helped them. They got out and set up a defensive line along the street, inflicting considerable losses to enemy infantry.”
The Russian military says it has seized control of at least nine border villages in the Kharkiv region. Kyiv has said it was repelling the attacks and battling for control of the settlements.
Several Russian media outlets, including Mash and Readovka, reported that Moscow’s troops had entered Vovchansk.
The main thrusts of Russia’s attack were aimed at Vovchansk and the town of Lyptsi around 7.5 km from the border and some 20 km (12 miles) from the city of Kharkiv, Ukrainian military spokesperson Nazar Voloshyn said.
“The situation is extremely difficult because enemy FPV drones are constantly above Vovchansk. It’s very difficult for the police and volunteers because they are risking their lives evacuating the town’s civilian population,” Tamaz Gambarashvili, head of Vovchansk’s military administration, told Reuters.
Kharkiv regional Governor Oleh Synehubov said Russian forces were “intensifying their shelling of Vovchansk". Nearly 6,000 residents had been evacuated from the area, he said.
Zelensky, in his nightly video address, said “defensive battles” had engulfed a string of villages in the Kharkiv region.
“There are villages that have in fact been turned from a ’grey zone' into a zone of hostilities,” he said.
“The occupier is trying to gain a foothold in some of them, while others are being used to advance further.”
Fighting was “no less acute” in Donetsk region, Zelensky said.
Thirty armed clashes had occurred in the past 24 hours, he said, in the Pokrovsk sector, northwest of Avdiivka, a key town captured by Russian forces in February. There was also fighting in the Lyman, Kupiansk, Kramatorsk and other areas.
Ukraine is currently on the defensive after months of slowed supplies of U.S. munitions. Russia’s forces hold a significant advantage in manpower and munitions.
In 2022, soon after the start of their full-scale invasion, Russian forces reached the suburbs of the city of Kharkiv before being driven back to the border.
Kyiv says months of delays by the U.S. Congress before voting through the massive aid package last month have cost them on the battlefield. It now hopes significant quantities of the newly approved assistance will arrive quickly to shore up the defence effort.
The commander of Ukraine’s land forces, General Oleksandr Pavliuk, had said he expected the war to enter a critical phase in the next two months as Moscow tries to exploit delays in supplying weapons to Kyiv.
Kyiv’s forces were doing all they could to hold the line in Kharkiv region, top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi said.
On the other side of the border in the Belgorod region a whole section of a Russian apartment block collapsed, killing at least 13 people, after it was struck by a missile launched by Ukraine and shot down by Russia, Russian officials said.
Kyiv did not immediately comment.
In response to Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod, President Vladimir Putin suggested in March that Moscow could try to establish a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.