Ukrainian forces fighting to halt new Russian assault aimed at creating Putin’s planned ‘’Buffer zone’’.
Russian forces attempted an armoured ground invasion of Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region with artillery and guided aerial bombs, Ukrainian officials have said, reports Al Jazeera.
On Friday, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces tried to breach Ukrainian defences near the town of Vovchansk with “armoured vehicles” at 5 am (02:00 GMT), hitting an area near the border with aerial attacks. The assault had been repulsed, but “battles of varying intensity” continued, it said.
A senior Ukrainian military source told the Reuters news agency that Russian forces had pushed one kilometre (0.6 miles) into the region. They aimed, he said, to advance as far as 10km (six miles) to establish the buffer zone that Russian President Vladimir Putin promised to create earlier this year as a means of halting Ukrainian attacks on Russian border regions.
Ukraine had previously said it was aware that Russia was assembling thousands of troops along the north-eastern border. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his forces were prepared for the ground assault.
“Ukraine met them there with troops: brigades and artillery,” he told a news conference.
Ukraine has sent more forces to the area as reinforcements.
Vitaliy Ganchev, a Russian-installed official in the Kharkiv region, said on the Telegram app that there was “fighting on several parts of the line of contact, including in the border areas”, and asked residents “To be careful and not to leave shelters without an urgent need”.
Kharkiv’s Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the authorities were evacuating about 3,000 civilians from Vovchansk, fewer than five kilometres (three miles) from the border, which had come under heavy shelling.
