Russian forces have captured three more villages in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region, as they press ahead with a new offensive intended to draw Ukrainian forces away from front lines in the east.
Since launching the operation on Friday, Russian troops have occupied about 10 settlements across 100 sq km of territory along Ukraine’s northern border.
Maps compiled by Deepstate, an open-source Ukrainian analysis group, indicated that Russia captured three villages on Sunday, and a battle is under way for control of Hlyboke, a village 40km north of Kharkiv.
The Russian defence ministry said on Monday it had improved its positions in the Kharkiv region and had taken offensive action in four areas — Vovchansk, Neskuchne, Vesele and Lyptsi.
Ukraine’s general staff said Russia was continuing to try to break Ukrainian lines on Monday, that Moscow achieved “partial success” around Lukyantsi and carried out air strikes in and around Vovchansk. It said Kyiv has sent reserves and depending “on how the situation develops, the expansion [of personnel] . . . will continue,” adding that its troops had all the necessary weaponry they needed.
Russia’s operations had previously been focused on the eastern Donetsk region of Ukraine, particularly around the critical stronghold of Chasiv Yar.
But Ukrainian officials believe Russia now wants to draw Ukrainian forces away from the battles in the east, where Kyiv is outgunned and struggling to hold its defensive lines.
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Moscow is also looking to exploit its superior resources ahead of the delivery of new military aid to Ukraine from the US, after a hold-up in Congress was resolved and a new aid package passed last month.
Russian forces are advancing much faster in the north than their grinding gains in the east of the country. However, Ukrainian officials and analysts said they had not yet managed a significant breakthrough.
They added that much of the newly occupied area falls within a “grey zone” where neither side previously held positions because its lowland terrain was hard to defend.
Serhiy Kuzan, chair of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center think-tank, said Deepstate’s maps indicated that Russia had not managed to achieve the kind of breakthrough it did a few weeks ago around Ocheretyne, near the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk.
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Kuzan added that while Russia did not have enough reserves to take Kharkiv, it had the capacity to continue fighting in the area for at least a month, aiming to get as close to the city as possible and “create pressure there” by shelling it.
A Ukrainian defence forces source told the Financial Times on Monday that Russia would need at least four times as many troops as it currently had for a ground offensive on Kharkiv, and maintained that Moscow’s goal was to stretch Ukraine’s forces.
Analysts have previously estimated that Russia would need to recruit at least 100,000 men if it wanted to take Kharkiv, with the Kremlin reluctant to sign off on another unpopular round of mass mobilisation.
Other than encroaching on Kharkiv, Russia may also be seeking to push Ukrainian forces deeper into the country to get them out of range of the Russian city of Belgorod, just 30km north of the border with Ukraine, which has come under increasing artillery fire in recent months.
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The governor of Belgorod region said on Monday that 19 people had been killed as a result of the fighting in the preceding weekend, blaming Ukrainian air and drone strikes.
At least nine people were killed when an explosion blew through part of a 10-storey apartment block on Sunday morning in the centre of the city.
A Ukrainian official confirmed that Ukraine’s SBU internal security services had conducted another drone attack inside Russia, hitting an oil depot in Belgorod and an electricity substation in the Lipetsk region.
“Russian industry, which works for the war against Ukraine, will remain a legitimate target for the SBU. Measures to undermine the enemy’s military potential will continue,” the person said.
On Monday, the Ukrainian army said it had replaced its commander for Kharkiv in an effort to boost its defence of the north-eastern region.
Ukraine’s general staff said there was fighting around settlements in the grey zone south of Pylna and on the outskirts of Vovchansk. It said reserves had been deployed to “stabilise the situation”.
“Our defenders conduct defensive actions [to] inflict damage on the enemy,” it said in a briefing on Monday. “[They are] using unmanned systems for the purpose of conducting reconnaissance and performing pinpoint strikes to achieve maximum losses.”
Vadym Ivaneshchenko, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s 42nd Brigade, which is fighting around Hlyboke, said Russian forces were approaching their positions. He said his unit was “fully equipped”, though more drones and electronic warfare equipment were always needed.
Speaking on Ukraine’s Radio NV, the head of Vovchansk’s local administration, Tamaz Gambarashvili, said it had been “extremely difficult” to build fortifications because the city was often being bombarded by Russian shelling. But Gambarashvili said the construction effort was ongoing.
Cartography and satellite visualisation by Steven Bernard
