More than 4,000 people have fled from areas around Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region since Friday, when Russia launched a surprise counteroffensive, the local governor said Sunday.
"In total, 4,073 people have been evacuated," Oleg Syniehubov wrote on his social media channels.
Syniehubov said a 63-year-old man was killed by artillery fire in the village of Glyboke and a 38-year-old man was wounded in Vovchansk, a border town with some 3,000 residents before Russia’s Friday attack.
Using artillery and mortar fire, Russian forces have been pounding towns and villages in the area.
At least one Ukrainian unit has withdrawn from the Kharkiv region as Russian forces take over areas in the so-called contested “gray zones" along the Russian border.
By Sunday afternoon, the town of Vovchansk, a town about 73 kilometers from Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, was the epicenter of ferocious battles in the area.
Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said Russian forces were on the outskirts of the town and approaching from three directions. “Infantry fighting is already taking place,” he said. A Russian tank was spotted along a major road leading to the town, Tymoshko said, demonstrating Moscow's confidence in deploying heavy weaponry.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday battles are raging across parts of the border in the Kharkiv region, where thousands were displaced after a Russian offensive.
"Defensive battles and fierce fighting continue on a large part of our borderline," Zelenskyy said, adding, "...the idea behind the attacks in the Kharkiv region is to stretch our forces and undermine the moral and motivational basis of the Ukrainians' ability to defend themselves."
The Russian defense ministry said Saturday its troops captured five villages across the border from Russia's Belgorod region.
The ministry said Moscow's forces had captured the villages of Pletenivka, Ohirtseve, Borysivka, Pylna and Strilecha in the Kharkiv region. Kyiv has contested that claim, but the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Ukraine, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, acknowledged Sunday that the situation is difficult in the area.
“The defense forces of Ukraine are doing everything to hold defensive lines and positions, (and) inflict damage on the enemy," Syrskyi wrote on the Telegram app.
Military spokesperson Nazar Voloshyn said on Ukrainian television Sunday that Russian forces are trying to widen the front, aiming at the towns of Vovchansk and Lyptsi.
Lyptsi is about 19 kilometers from the outskirts of the city of Kharkiv.
In 2022, Russian forces reached the city's suburbs before being driven back to the border.
Voloshyn urged residents to keep calm, saying that Russia was waging a propaganda campaign aiming to create panic alongside its military assault.
"The population should remain calm... the defense forces are holding (the lines); the situation is under control," the spokesperson said.
More than two years after its invasion, Russia has gained the advantage on the battlefield, opening a new front as Ukraine faces shortages of personnel, along with stocks of artillery shells and air defenses.
In a statement earlier Saturday, Zelenskyy urged Kyiv's Western allies to expedite the supply of weapons they had pledged.
"It is important that partners support our soldiers and Ukrainian stability with timely supplies. Really timely. The package that really helps is the weapons brought to Ukraine, not just the ones announced," he said.
The United States announced a fresh $400 million military aid package of weapons and equipment for Ukraine as Ukrainian forces try to repel an intensified Russian armored ground offensive near Kharkiv, White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said.
The State Department said in a statement the emergency military package contains urgently needed capabilities, such as additional air defense munitions for Patriot and National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems; Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and more.
The package by the Presidential Drawdown Authority allows the U.S. president to transfer munitions and services from the Pentagon’s U.S. stockpile without the U.S. administration needing to receive congressional approval.
This is the third tranche of emergency military aid for Ukraine since Congress passed a $95 billion aid bill, with $60.8 billion of that amount going to Ukraine.
Russia's Belgorod struck
On the other side of the border, in Russia’s Belgorod region, a Ukrainian Tochka-U missile struck a "residential district" in the city.
Nine people were killed when the apartment building collapsed, according to local officials.
"In total, five bodies have been taken out of the rubble," Russia's emergency situations ministry said on social media Sunday.
Emergency services were quoted by the TASS news agency as saying that 20 people were also injured.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the attack "barbaric,” the TASS news agency reported.
Kyiv made no comment. Its forces have intensified attacks recently on Belgorod in its effort to free all its territory from Russian control.
In response to Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested in March that Moscow could try to establish a buffer zone inside Ukrainian territory.
Some information for this report came from Reuters, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.
