Kharkiv offensive: What is the extent of Russian advances? | DW News

Kharkiv offensive: What is the extent of Russian advances? | DW News

to Ukraine next where president valdimir zilinski has cancelled all of his upcoming trips as Russia intensifies attacks on the Eastern region of khv the new offensive began last week in one of the most significant border incursions since the War Began the town of vonk has seen some of the most intense battles and almost 8,000 people have been forced to flee their homes residents are reluctantly leaving boans as fighting in intensifies many arrive at this evacuation point on foot it’s become harder to drive out of the city with damaged roads and fighting on some streets we’re here evacuating people and helping everyone the situation of O chance is extremely difficult the enemy is holding positions on the streets so please evacuate we’re helping everyone we’re working on the spot together we will win glory to Ukraine nearly 8,000 people have been evacuated since Friday Ukraine is trying to hold the line Russia’s defense Ministry claims to have captured a handful of villagers Ukrainian President vadir zalinski says everything must be done to ensure that the Russian defensive does not succeed in the har region our defense continues in the areas near the border and the City of oans over the course of the day our defense and security forces have managed to partially stabilize the situation the occupier who entered in the har region is being destroyed with all available means the town of volans is around 75 kilm from h Ukraine’s second largest city ke says Russia’s assault does not present an imminent threat to the city which is home to 1.3 million people for more I’m joined by our correspondent Nick Conley in ke Nick with shortages of both Manpower and weapons will Ukraine be able to hold the line in the har region well bares we are hearing from the Ukrainian military that they say have slowed down that Russian Advance near the border Northeast of khv I think in that part of the country it is less about the kind of industrial kind of positional Warfare that we’ve seen in the east of the country in donbass where it really is about having enough people in the trenches and having enough artillery shells to kind of return fire this is all a lot more reminiscent of the first weeks of the war where you basically have Russian troops even coming in on foot and it’s more a kind of game of hideand-seek finding where those troops are and trying to kind of control and kind of contain that Russian advance so I think it’s less about kind of resources for now there’s certainly more a question of uh the quality of Ukrainian military uh responses especially in the first few days of all this but certainly there is an expectation that maybe the Russians in a couple of days time could take uh the city of w Chans they are as we believe on the kind of Northern outskirts so it’s still very difficult to get a really comprehensive picture access is very patchy for journalist and even internet phone connection is very uh poor you understandably so often enough it turn out that Villages that are thought to be under Russian control aren’t and the other way around so it is still almost a week into this border incursion a pretty uh unclear picture and how is the opening of this new front affecting morale around the country well certainly there has been a lot of criticism for the military and also political leadership here in the country that this was possible these were regions that were retaken by Ukraine in the Autumn of 2022 they had a lot of time to prepare and you know Ukraine were’re seeing images of Russian soldiers coming in on foot seemingly uh no uh anti-personnel mines there getting in the way seemingly pretty easy for them to come in now we have had response from the government they have said that basically it was impossible to build uh kind of deep concrete defenses directly in that border Zone because of constant Russian shelling from across the border uh they say that there were mines to prevent tanks coming in that’s why the Russians had to come in on foot uh and that the better defenses were basically 15 20 km further in from the border those are areas the Russians have yet to reach but still that isn’t really cutting a lot of ice with many ukrainians we’ve seen a change in military leadership there because of that poor initial response uh and there’s also the wider question obviously of Western weapons right now basically by forbidding Ukraine from using Western produced weapons to attack Russia proper rather than Russian occupied Ukraine they basically encourag Russia to do these uh attacks from Russian territory because Ukraine is not able to use high Mars or other you know Western produced systems to attack the Russian Logistics just beyond the borders so there’s a lot of pressure now from Ukraine to get West and allies to reverse that position the UK has already moved away from that position and there was a lot of attention to Anthony blinkin who was here in Kiev who seems to be you know moving towards changing that position but for now Ukraine is still in a very difficult position there we’ll leave it there for the moment our correspondent Nick Conley in ke thanks so much

Ukraine’s president Volodymyrr Zelenskyy has canceled all of his upcoming trips as Russia intensifies attacks on the eastern region of Kharkiv. The new offensive began last week in one of the most significant border incursions since the war began. The town of Vovchansk has seen some of the most intense battles and almost 8,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

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