By Sergiy Karazy and Tom Balmforth
KYIV (Reuters) -Russian forces launched an armoured ground attack on Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region early on Friday, advancing 1 km (0.6 mile) near the border town of Vovchansk in an effort to create a buffer zone, a senior Ukrainian military source said.
The assault opens a new front in the war more than two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion. Fighting in the border areas of the Kharkiv region continued and Kyiv has sent more forces to the area as reinforcements, the defence ministry said.
“At approximately 5 a.m., there was an attempt by the enemy to break through our defensive line under the cover of armoured vehicles,” the ministry said.
“As of now, these attacks have been repulsed; battles of varying intensity continue.”
A senior Ukrainian military source who declined to be named said that Russian forces had pushed 1 km inside the Ukrainian border and were aiming to push the Ukrainian armed forces as far back as 10 km inside Ukraine. Kyiv’s forces were trying to hold them back.
Ukraine chased Russian troops out of most of Kharkiv region in 2022, the first year of full-scale war, but after weathering Kyiv’s counteroffensive last year, Russia forces are back on the offensive and slowly advancing in the Donetsk region further south.
Fears grew in March over the Kremlin’s intentions in Kharkiv region when Russian President Vladimir Putin called for the creation of a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory that he said was needed to protect Russia.
Since then, Kharkiv, which is particularly vulnerable because of its proximity to Russia, has been hammered by air strikes that have caused major damage to the region’s power infrastructure.
In Vovchansk, a Kharkiv region border town with a pre-war population of 17,000 that has dwindled to a few thousand, authorities said the settlement and surrounding areas were under massive shelling.
Authorities were helping civilians evacuate, Tamaz Gambarashvili, head of the Vovchansk military administration, told Hromadske radio.
More than two years into the invasion, Moscow has the battlefield momentum and Ukraine faces shortages of manpower and stocks of artillery shells and air defences.
(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Sergiy Karazy; Writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Mark Heinrich and Philippa Fletcher)
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