Dozens of towns in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Thursday ordered the evacuation of their residents in the face of the advance of the Russian army, which intends to “improve its position” in the offensive.
• Also read: Explosion in a factory in Russia: According to the authorities, at least twelve people are missing
• Also read: New Ukrainian drone strikes foiled near Crimea and Moscow
The Russian army, driven in September 2022 by a Ukrainian blitz counterattack from the city of Kupyansk and its vicinity, which it had occupied since the beginning of the invasion, has gone back on the offensive and has regularly claimed territorial gains.
The Ukrainian army on Thursday acknowledged a “difficult” situation in this sector. “The situation remains difficult but under control,” Serguiy Tcherevaty, army spokesman for the eastern sector, told Telegram, using a common phrasing used by Kyiv during his opponent’s advances. “The Russians are trying to assert themselves and break through our defences,” he added.
“In the direction of Kupyansk, the assault units of the western combat groups have improved their positions at the front during offensive actions,” the Russian Defense Ministry said earlier in its daily report.
In light of these advances, a decree signed by local authorities ordered the evacuation of 37 sites in the Kupyansk district, a key communications hub. These are mainly villages near the front, on the left bank of the Oskil River.
The administration of Kupyansk, a city with a population of around 25,000 before the war, recommended its residents in the morning to evacuate towards the regional capital of Kharkiv, mainly because of “the difficult security situation and the increasing number of bomb attacks”.
According to regional governor Oleg Sinegoubov, two residents were injured during the night in the evacuated village of Kindrachivka. Kupiansk was also hit twice, he said, and published a photo of a bomb-damaged administration building, but no one was injured.
“To a safe place”
Anna Korech, a 36-year-old mother from the village of Kivcharivka affected by the decree, was contacted by AFP by phone and said she was in the middle of preparing to leave for Zhitomir in central Ukraine.
“As the situation becomes dangerous, it’s important to get the children somewhere safe,” says the mother-of-four whose building was bombed last month, adding that her husband will stay to take care of his mother to take care of who is just recovering from a stroke.
According to maps seen in the Russian Defense Ministry video briefing, troops from Moscow are said to be only a few kilometers from Kupyansk. On Monday, the Russian army said it had advanced three kilometers towards the city in three days.
If they have long been limited, Ukrainian attacks in border areas of Russia are also becoming more frequent.
Two people were killed this time in a Ukrainian bombing raid on the village of Chaoussy in the Bryansk region, following the death of a civilian in the Belgorod region on Wednesday, according to regional governor Alexander Bogomaz, who clarified on Telegram that a man and a woman also had the wife “suffered more or less serious injuries”.
drone war
At the same time, drone warfare continues, with increasing attacks on Russian-controlled areas.
Moscow claimed early Thursday it shot down 13 Ukrainian planes, including 11 near the annexed Crimea peninsula and two en route to Moscow.
One of the missiles aimed at the capital was shot down by anti-aircraft defenses in the Kaluga region, southwest of the capital, and the second in the Moscow region, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.
The two drones were shot down around 4 a.m. local time (01:00 GMT), Mayor of the Russian capital Sergei Sobyanin told Telegram. Aviation authorities said that two Moscow airports, Domodedovo and Vnukovo, had temporarily suspended their flights.
In Crimea, “near the city of Sevastopol, two drones were hit by deployed anti-aircraft equipment, and nine others were neutralized by electronic warfare and crashed into the Black Sea before reaching the target,” according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
For its part, the Ukrainian army claimed that ten Iranian-made demolition drones “Shahed” were fired on its territory during the night, seven of which were destroyed. In Doubno in the northwest, a fuel depot was destroyed without any fatalities, the regional governor reported.
On the economic front, Kyiv assured that it had opened “temporary” Black Sea corridors overnight to allow ships carrying grain to pass, despite Russia warning those ships could be targeted by its army.
It was not immediately clear whether ships had already left the Ukrainian coast or not, as there had been episodes of war in the Black Sea since July.