Updated 04.23 | Published 03.46
unsaveSave
expand-left
fullscreen Ukrainian personnel built defensive positions in the Kharkiv region earlier in March. Photo: Efrem Lukatsky/AP/TT
Ukraine’s air force warns again of bomb attacks against the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine.
– We are adding more forces in the direction of Kharkiv, Zelenskyy says in his evening speech.
“Stay in shelters, the occupiers are attacking,” wrote Governor Oleh Synehubov on Telegram on Saturday night.
The air raid alert has been activated more or less regularly in the big city of Kharkiv since Russian forces tried to launch a major ground offensive against Ukrainian areas near the border with Russia on Friday.
On Friday, the longest continuous air raid alert was issued in Kharkiv, 13 hours, since Russia launched the full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s foreign ministry said.
Heavy fighting took place on Friday and civilians have begun to be evacuated from the town of Vovtyansk, which is barely five kilometers from the Russian border, due to the intensified Russian attacks.
The offensive means that a new front line in the war is opened.
– We are adding more forces in the direction of Kharkiv. “Both along our state border and along the entire front line, we will invariably destroy the occupier in a way that will disrupt any Russian offensive intentions,” Zelenskyy said in a speech on Friday evening.
Three people have been killed in an attack on an oil depot in the Russian-occupied town of Rovenki in Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, claims Leonid Pasetchnik, who is appointed by Moscow as the governor of the occupation regime.
A heavy fire has broken out in the oil depot controlled by Russia and residential buildings nearby have also been damaged, he writes on Telegram.