Ukrainian forces have secured “combat control” of areas where Russian troops entered the northeastern Kharkiv region earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
“Our soldiers have now managed to take combat control of the border area where the Russian occupiers entered,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address on Friday evening.
Zelensky’s comments appeared to be at odds with those made by Russian officials.
Viktor Vodolatskiy, a member of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said Russian forces now controlled more than half of the town of Vovchansk, 5km inside the border, Russian state news agency Tass reported on Friday.
Vovchansk has been a flashpoint for fighting since Russia launched an offensive in the Kharkiv region on May 10.
Vodolatskiy was also quoted as saying that, once Vovchansk was secured, Russian forces would target the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk in the neighbouring Donetsk region.
No independent confirmation of the claims was immediately possible.
Russia’s Kharkiv push appears to be a coordinated new offensive that includes testing Ukrainian defences in the Donetsk region further south, while also launching incursions in the northern Sumy and Chernihiv regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the Kremlin’s army is attempting to create a “buffer zone” in the Kharkiv region to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.
The city of Kharkiv, which is the capital of the region, is about 20 km from the Russian border. Moscow’s troops have in recent weeks captured villages in the area as part of a broad push, and analysts say they may be trying to get within artillery range of the city. Ukrainian authorities have evacuated more than 11,000 people from the region since the start of the offensive.
The Russian push is shaping up to be Ukraine’s biggest test since Moscow’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces being pressed at several points along the about 1,000-km front line that snakes from north to south in eastern Ukraine.
