Russia withdraws from Kharkiv, focusing on attacking eastern Ukraine

The AP quoted Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov as saying that Ukraine was “entering a new, long phase of the war”. Russian forces are withdrawing from the city Kharkiv in the northeast and focused on guarding supply routes, while also conducting air strikes, mortar attacks, and artillery attacks on Donetsk province in the east in order to “drain the Ukrainian forces and destroy them.” destroy the fortifications”.

After failing to capture the capital, Kiev, Russian President Vladimir Putin turned his focus to the Eastern Donbass, where Ukrainian forces have been fighting separatists since 2014.

The offensive was aimed at encircling Ukraine’s most experienced and best equipped troops, which were deployed in the East and controlled part of the Donbass.

Russia captured several villages and towns in Donbassincluding Rubizhne, which had a population of about 55,000 before the war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had also made progress in the east, retaking six towns or villages in the past day. In his nightly address on May 14, Zelensky said “the situation in Donbass is still very difficult” and that the Russian army “is still trying to win”.

Kharkiv, near the Russian border and just 80 kilometers southwest of the Russian city of Belgorod, has experienced weeks of intense shelling. The city of Kharkiv, with a population of 1.4 million mainly Russian-speaking people, was an important military target earlier in the war, when Moscow hoped to capture and hold major cities.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington DC-based think tank, said it “seems like Ukraine won the battle of Kharkiv”. “Ukrainian forces prevented the Russian army from encircling, let alone capturing Kharkiv, and then expelling them from the city, just as they did the Russian forces trying to take Kiev” – according to the institute’s information.

Regional Governor Oleh Sinegubov said on Telegram that there was no shelling attack on Kharkiv in the past day. Ukraine has launched a counter-offensive near Izyum, he added, a city 125 kilometers south of Kharkiv that Russia has held since at least early April.

Meanwhile, Oleh Zhdanov, an independent Ukrainian military analyst, said that fighting was fierce on the River Siversky Donets near the city of Severodonetsk, where Ukraine launched counter-attacks but failed to stop the advance of Ukraine. Russia. “The fate of a large part of the Ukrainian army is being decided – there are about 40,000 Ukrainian soldiers,” Zhdanov said.

However, Russian forces suffered heavy losses in a Ukrainian attack that destroyed a pontoon bridge that the Russian side was using to cross the river in the town of Bilohorivka, according to Ukrainian and British officials.

In other developments, Ukrainian forces hid in Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol faced repeated attacks on the city’s last stronghold of resistance. Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said authorities are negotiating the evacuation of 60 seriously wounded soldiers, but Russia has not yet agreed to evacuate all wounded fighters at the steel plant, which amounts to up to 60 soldiers. hundreds of people.

Mariupol Mayor Petro Andryushenko’s advisor wrote on Telegram that a convoy of 500 to 1,000 civilians carrying civilians from the city was allowed to enter Ukrainian-controlled territory and headed for Zaporizhzhia, the first major city on the front lines.

Russian Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives Anna Kuznetsova visited Kherson, the area bordering the Black Sea that has been occupied by Russia since the early days of the campaign. Russia has established a pro-Moscow regional government in Kherson. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the people of the province Kherson decide whether to join Russia or not.