Ukraine says it stopped Russian assault on Kharkiv region

Ukraine assuredé Friday having "stopé" the Russian assault on the Kharkiv region, underway for two weeks, and having begun a counterattack in this sector of the northeast of its territory whereù visited President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The Russian army launched an offensive in the Kharkiv region from the border on May 10, seizing several localities and forcing Ukraine to deploy valuable reinforcements in the area.

After two weeks of fighting, “Ukrainian defense forces have stopped Russian troops” and “are carrying out counter-offensive actions,” Colonel Igor Prokhorenko, a state official, said on Friday. major of the Ukrainian army.

He described the situation as “difficult” but “stable and under control” in this region where clashes are taking place particularly for control from the city of Vovchansk, cut in two and where Kiev has accused Russian forces of abuses.

“The enemy is completely bogged down in street fighting in Vovchansk and suffered very significant losses,” General Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army, assured Friday, affirming that Moscow was sending “reserves” to continue its assault.

According to kyiv, Russia is seeking to extend to breaking point the defensive lines of the Ukrainian forces, weakened by two years of war, the lack of new recruits and shortages of weapons due to months of Western prevarication.

President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that he would be in Kharkiv on Friday for meetings on the “defense of the region”.

“Our soldiers were able to regain the initiative in the fighting in the border area where the Russian occupiers entered”, he assured in the evening.

– Multiple Russian assaults –

As for other sectors of the front, General Syrsky's tone was more somber.

< p>Further south in the Kharkiv region, the Russians have been on the attack near Kupiansk for almost a year, and now “the situation is complicated in the Kyslivka sector, where the enemy is trying to break through our defenses and reach the Oskil”, a river.

Ukraine: positions of military forces © AFP – Valentin RAKOVSKY, Sophie RAMIS, Cléa PECULIER

In the Donbass (east), the officer reported fierce clashes in the areas of Chassiv Iar, Pokrovsk and Kurakhové, where the Russians have been nibbling ground for months.

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Finally, “the most intense and violent fighting is taking place in the Pokrovsk and Kurakhové sectors. The enemy is trying to break through the defense of our troops on a narrow section of the front between Staromykhaïlivka and Berdytchi”, he said. – he specified.

Russia says its May offensive in northeastern Ukraine aims to create a buffer zone supposed to prevent strikes Ukrainians on Russian territory.

Russian advances in recent days near Chassiv Yar seem to be increasing.

Moscow notably claimed the capture of two villages on the outskirts that Ukraine had liberated last summer.

The Kremlin is trying to take advantage of the fact that the opposing army has been weakened by losses and months of paralysis of American military aid.

Russia, which has put its arms industry in order for battle, said on Friday it was preparing a visit by President Vladimir Putin to North Korea, a country already suspected of supplying thousands of tons of shells and other munitions to Russia.

The United States, for its part, announced on Friday the sending a new tranche of 275 million dollars in arms to “help Ukraine repel Russia's offensive near Kharkiv”.

– ” A wall of drones” –

But Ukraine still lacks anti-aircraft defense means and is demanding that the Europeans and Americans finally authorize it to use the weapons provided to strike the army's rear bases on Russian territory, something that the West has so far refused to do. fear of an escalation.

President Zelensky is therefore increasing his interventions, pressing Ukraine's allies to provide him with anti-missile systems and allow him to strike targets military in Russia with Western munitions.

A Ukrainian firefighter responds after a missile attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine, May 23, 2024 © AFP – SERGEY BOBOK

In the meantime, Russian forces continue to bombard Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city. Around fifteen missiles hit it on Thursday, causing the death of seven civilians.

New bombings during the night from Thursday to Friday damaged vital regional railway infrastructure for the economy and travel in a country deprived of air links in particular for more than two years.

For its part, Ukraine continues to strike the occupied zones, Russian regions and Crimea, annexed in 2014. The Russian governor of this peninsula, Sergei Aksionov, said that two civilians had died in the Simferopol district, in the center of this peninsula.

The six NATO member countries sharing a land border with Russia have also agreed to erect a “drone wall stretching from Norway to Poland”, aiming to protect themselves with advanced technologies against “provocations from hostile countries”, Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite announced to the BNS news agency.

NATO is the same day called “solidarity” with Estonia after a border incident – the unilateral withdrawal of boundary buoys – which pitted it against Russia on the Narva river separating the two countries.

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