Ukraine rushed reinforcements to its northern border on Friday after Russian forces attempted to break through Ukrainian lines in several sections, applying new pressure on forces already stretched along a 600-mile front.
The Russian assaults began around 5 a.m. Friday with massive aerial bombardments of Ukrainian positions followed by armored columns attempting to break through at several points along the border, according to A declaration of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
“For the moment, these attacks have been repelled and fighting of varying intensity continues,” the ministry said. “To strengthen the defense in this sector of the front, reserve units have been deployed.”
The scale and intent of Russian incursions on the border remain unclear. Military analysts have said Russia could try to force Ukraine to devote valuable resources to the region’s defense, just like the Russians. attacks in eastern Ukraine intensify.
But a senior Ukrainian commander, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the current state of the fighting, said Friday that Russian attacks went beyond investigations or intelligence gathering. The commander said the Kremlin’s immediate goal appeared to be to create a buffer zone along the border.
After heavy fighting raged through the night and morning, smaller skirmishes continued into the evening as Russia sought to consolidate control over several small villages just on the border, a Ukrainian official said familiar with combat. Although few civilians remained in the attacked areas, at least one resident of the town of Vovchansk was killed in the shelling, local officials said, and several others were injured.
Opening a new combat zone would pose a significant challenge for Ukraine. It is unclear how deep Ukraine’s border defenses were, how well equipped they were, and how well they would hold up if Russia were to launch sustained offensive operations in that direction.
New shipments of powerful Western weapons are on their way to Ukraine, but commanders say they have not arrived in sufficient numbers to have a significant impact. Meanwhile, military analysts say, Russia will likely try to take advantage of the window before weapons arrive in force to accelerate further advances.
As they announced a new military aid package to Ukraine, White House officials said Friday that they did not expect Russia’s push on the border to result in major gains on the battlefield.
“We expected Russia to launch an offensive against Kharkiv, which now appears to have begun,” said John F. Kirby, White House national security spokesman. “We have worked in close coordination with Ukraine to help them prepare. At present, we assess that Russia has intensified cross-border fires and launched the first incursions.”
Mr. Kirby said that in the coming weeks, “Russia will likely increase the intensity of the fires and commit additional troops” to establish a shallow buffer zone, but added “we do not anticipate any major breakthroughs.”
Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts also said Moscow likely lacked the combat power to capture Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, 32 kilometers from the Russian border.
Russian officials have not commented on the incursions.
It was unclear whether Russia had captured any territory. Ukraine’s top commander said kyiv’s forces stopped a Russian attack on a village called Lyptsi, less than a kilometer from the border in the Kharkiv region. This area was now considered a gray zone, meaning the fighting was too intense and the situation too fluid to tell who was in control of the territory.
For Russia, even establishing a beachhead across the border could expose the city of Kharkiv to artillery, allowing troops to step up efforts to make the city unlivable. And it would help create a secure zone that Russia could use as a jumping-off point to deploy personnel and weapons.
It would also allow Russia to protect cities across the border from Ukrainian bombing.
The Kharkiv regional administration urged residents of villages near the border to evacuate. Some, like Vovchansk, which was heavily bombed throughout the war, have been almost empty for months.
A doctor at Vovchansk hospital, about six kilometers from the Russian border, said intense fighting was raging all around the small town. “We are currently evacuating people from the hospital,” he said, asking that his name not be used because he feared for his safety. “They hit very hard and destroy everything.”
He said Ukrainian soldiers appeared to be preventing the advance into the city but Russians were attacking tanks, armored fighting vehicles and fighter jets. Many small villages in the border regions have been evacuated for months as shelling intensified, and Ukrainian officials said Friday those efforts were continuing.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, at a press briefing in kyiv with his Slovak counterpart Zuzana Caputova, said Russian forces were met by “our troops, our brigades and our artillery”, adding: “There is a battle fierce in this direction – we greeted them with fire. .”
On Friday afternoon, the Biden administration announced a $400 million shipment of air defense interceptors, artillery munitions, Bradley fighting vehicles and other weapons to Ukraine.
The latest weapons package — which includes Patriot anti-missile interceptors, 155-millimeter artillery shells, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Javelin anti-tank missiles — comes about two weeks after the administration said that it planned to invest more than a billion dollars in weapons and ammunition. Ukraine. This followed Congress’ approval of $60.8 billion in military aid to kyiv, which had been blocked for months by House Republicans.
Russian forces failed to take the city of Kharkiv in the first weeks of the war and were almost completely driven from the region during a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the fall of 2022. Hundreds of thousands of people who fled the city returned home and began to rebuild their lives.
But in recent months, Russia has stepped up its bombardment of the city, targeting it almost daily with missiles, drones and powerful guided bombs aimed at energy infrastructure, important industries and residential neighborhoods.
At the same time, Russia has increased the number of troops deployed to the border.
The Ukrainian military responded by fortifying its defenses along large stretches of the border, and residents reported seeing an influx of troops around the borders of Kharkiv and Sumy.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the country’s top military commander, said recently that the Russians were likely considering further offensive operations, but that he had confidence in Ukraine’s defenses along the border, stressing that the army had already fought the Russians once in Kharkiv. region and won.
Liubov Sholudko contributed reporting from kyiv, Ukraine.
