Nearly ten thousand residents of the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine have been evacuated since the start of the new ground offensive by Russian forces, which could presage an even broader attack, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Friday May 17, Moscow claimed the capture of a dozen localities in one week.
Information to remember
⇒ 10,000 people evacuated from the Kharkiv region, attacked by Russia
⇒ Moscow claimed on Friday May 17 the capture of a dozen Ukrainian localities
⇒ To deal with the shortage of soldiers, Volodymyr Zelensky approved a law allowing the recruitment of detainees
Kharkiv residents flee Russian attacks
Nearly ten thousand people have been forced to leave their homes in the Kharkiv region, northeast of Ukraine, since the start of the ground offensive by Russian forces. “A total of 9,907 people have been evacuated,” said the governor, Oleg Synegoubov, more than a week after the launch of the Russian assault, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned could only be the first wave of a larger offensive.
Friday afternoon, Kharkiv, very regularly bombed, was hit by new Russian strikes which left at least three dead and 28 injured, according to a latest report provided in the evening by the mayor, Igor Terekhov. Residents fled Russian soldiers who managed to advance five to ten kilometers along the northeast border before being stopped by Ukrainian forces. Oleg Synegubov said Ukrainian armed forces repelled two attempts to break through the defenses overnight. But the situation is “under control”, the “defenders carrying out assaults and search operations in certain areas”, he said.
Volodymyr Zelensky says he expects a broader offensive from Russia
“They have launched their operation, it could be made up of several waves. And this is their first wave,” Volodymyr Zelensky said in an AFP interview on Friday, while Russia has just garnered its most major territorial gains since the end of 2022.
The Ukrainian president nevertheless assured that, despite Russian advances in recent days in the Kharkiv region, the situation was better than a week ago for his forces, when Kremlin troops crossed the border by surprise. For him, Russia wants to attack the city of Kharkiv, the country’s second city, only a few dozen kilometers from the front. Moscow had already failed to take it in 2022, and Vladimir Putin said on Friday that he did not intend to attack it “for the moment”.
Russia claims the capture of 12 localities
For its part, the Russian army claimed Friday the capture, in one week, of 12 localities in the region and affirmed that its forces continued to advance. Moscow has made its largest territorial gains in one week since the end of 2022, with some 257 km2 conquered in the Kharkiv region alone, according to an AFP analysis on Thursday based on data provided by the American Institute for the Study of war (ISW).
Moscow attacked several towns, including Vovchansk, just five kilometers from the border. “In the area of the city of Vovchansk, Ukrainian troops are strengthening their defense,” added Oleg Synegubov. A day earlier, he had said that Russian forces had taken Vovchansk and that all but 200 of the residents (18,000 before the war) had fled because of the fighting.
Ukraine: new law on military enlistment
Moscow’s forces are trying to take advantage of the lack of men and weapons facing Ukraine after two years of war. Volodymyr Zelensky admitted to AFP a shortage of staff. “There are a significant number of brigades that are empty,” he said.
Faced with its shortcomings, kyiv passed controversial legislation to accelerate military mobilization by lowering the age from 27 to 25, which came into force on Saturday. On Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky also signed a law that allows prisoners to be recruited in exchange for parole.
Ukrainian drone attacks in Crimea
In the meantime, Ukraine has again launched, according to Moscow, drone attacks against several Russian regions and the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, killing two people and leading to power outages and infrastructure fires. The governor of the Belgorod region, Vyacheslav Gladkov, reported the death of a mother and her four-year-old child in the village of Oktyabrsky. In the evening, he also announced the death of a man in the village of Novaya Naoumovka attacked by drones, and of an injured person hospitalized.
In the Krasnodar region (southwest), authorities claimed that two Ukrainian drones had set fire to a refinery in Tuapse. In this same region, “civilian infrastructure” was hit and caught fire in Novorossiysk, a Black Sea port. In Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula annexed in 2014 by Russia, the city of Sevastopol, headquarters of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, was partly deprived of power because an electrical installation was damaged, according to local authorities. Finally, during the day on Friday, a woman was killed by a strike in the Russian region of Bryansk, according to the governor.