MOSCOW: Russia said on Saturday it had captured five villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region in a surprise ground offensive that prompted mass evacuations as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an urgent appeal for military aid.
Moscow’s Defence Ministry said its troops had “liberated” five villages in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region near the Russian border – Pletenivka, Borysivka, Ohirtseve, Pylna and Strilecha – and also captured one village in the Donetsk region.
On Friday, Ukraine’s Defence Ministry said that Russia had launched a surprise attack on the Kharkiv region, making small advances into a border zone from where it had been pushed back nearly two years ago.
“Fighting for villages… continues in the border area,” Nazar Voloshyn, the Ukrainian military spokesman, said on national television on Saturday.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on social media that there was “heavy fighting” in the border area and 1,775 people have been evacuated.
Two men, aged 50 and 48, were killed and two wounded in guided aerial bomb attacks on the town of Vovchansk near the border, he said later. He published a video from Vovchansk, on which the windows of a multi-storey block of flats were blown out and broken houses in flames.
The governor insisted there was “no threat of ground operations” for the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest.
Groups of people fleeing the border area were arriving in vans and cars laden with bags at a reception center for evacuees near Kharkiv.
The evacuees – many of them elderly – were given food and medical attention and allowed to sleep on bunk beds.
One woman, Lyubov Nikolayev, 61, told AFP she fled the border village of Lyptsi with her 81-year-old mother.
“You can’t live there,” Nikolayeva said, adding that her family “stayed there until the last moment” without gas or electricity.
“There’s constant fire coming: those guided aerial bombs and mortar shells whistling overhead. It was getting very scary,” she said.
An aid worker helping to evacuate residents, Dmytro Tkachenko (37), told media that the situation is really difficult and difficult in the direction of Vovchansk and Lyptsi.
As of September 2022, the Kharkiv region is largely under the control of Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said Saturday’s troops must “return the initiative to Ukraine” and called on Kiev’s allies to speed up arms deliveries.
“Every air defense system, every anti-missile system is literally what saves lives,” Zelenskyy said.
Ukrainian forces have stepped up attacks inside Russia and Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine, particularly on energy infrastructure.
Also on Saturday, a rocket killed three people when it hit the Paradise restaurant in the Russian-held eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
The attack, using US HIMARS precision rocket launchers, killed two diners and a restaurant worker and wounded nine, officials of the Russian-backed administration said.
Kiev officials have warned for weeks that Moscow may try to attack the northeastern border regions, gaining an advantage as Ukraine struggles with delays in Western aid and labour shortages.
Ukraine’s military said it had deployed reserve units “to strengthen defences in these areas of the front”.
According to military expert Olivier Kempf, the Russian ground operation was most likely aimed at creating a buffer zone near its Belgorod region, which was recently attacked by pro-Ukrainian forces, or diverting Ukrainian resources from the Donetsk region.
Washington announced a new $400 million military aid package for Kiev hours after the offensive began, saying it was confident Ukraine could repel any new Russian campaign.
