Numerous battles in the morning
Russians continue to attack near Kharkiv
May 11, 2024, 11:09 a.m
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Are the Russians advancing into the city of Kharkiv again? At least they are fighting a lot of battles in the border area again. According to the US think tank ISW, they are not yet planning to “enclose, encircle or conquer” Kharkiv. They obviously still have other goals.
According to the General Staff, the Ukrainian army continues to defend itself against a Russian offensive in the border area near the megacity of Kharkiv. The military reported nine battles on this section of the front this morning. It was generally stated that the Russian advances had been repelled.
“The enemy is using ground troops and technology,” said a statement from the General Staff on Friday evening. The Ukrainian military has been reporting Russian advances on two broad sectors of the front since Friday. The offensive was expected because the Russian army has massed tens of thousands of soldiers near the border. President Vladimir Putin had also threatened an offensive in March.
However, Ukrainian and Russian military observers as well as foreign experts assumed that the attack was not yet aimed at the city of Kharkiv. The Institute for War Studies ISW in the USA spoke of “limited operational objectives”. The attacks were intended to push Ukrainian forces away from the border; The advance was intended to bring Kharkiv back into range of Russian artillery.
The strategic goal is therefore to force the Ukrainians to withdraw soldiers and material from other beleaguered sections of the front in the east. The limited deployment does not suggest “that Russian forces are conducting a large-scale offensive operation to encircle, encircle or capture Kharkiv,” the ISW wrote. Right at the beginning of the war of aggression in spring 2022, Russian troops entered Kharkiv but were repelled.
Attack with two directions
According to reports from the front, the attack has two directions. On a section of the border about 30 kilometers north of Kharkiv, Russian troops occupied several Ukrainian villages. According to consistent information, they were in a kind of gray zone in front of the front Ukrainian defense. The Ukrainian General Staff named the village of Lipzy as the thrust of this attack. The second attack targeted the town of Vovchansk, about 40 kilometers northeast of Kharkiv. There, too, several small towns along the border were occupied. In the Vovchansk case, experts see more of a Russian intention to disrupt Ukraine’s supply lines in the direction of Kupyansk.
According to Russian information, Ukraine also defended itself by attacking the Russian border region of Belgorod with rocket artillery and drones on Saturday night. Missile alarms were also triggered temporarily in Belgorod in the morning. In Rovenki in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, shelling caused a fire in a fuel depot. Ukraine has been fighting the large-scale Russian invasion for more than two years.