Russia claims gains in ground offensive in Ukraine's Kharkiv region
Russia on Saturday said it had captured five villages in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region during a surprise ground offensive that prompted mass evacuations, as President Volodymyr Zelensky made an urgent call for military aid.
Moscow's defence ministry said its troops had «liberated» five villages in Ukraine's Kharkiv region near the Russian border — Borysivka, Ogirtseve, Pletenivka, Pylna and Strilecha — as well as taking one village in the Donetsk region.
Ukraine's defence ministry said Friday Russia had launched a surprise attack on the Kharkiv region, making small advances into a border zone from where it had been pushed back nearly two years ago.
"Fighting for villages… continues in the border area," Ukrainian military spokesman Nazar Voloshyn said on national television on Saturday.
There was «heavy fighting» in the border area and 1,775 people have been evacuated, Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on social media.
Two men aged 50 and 48 were killed and two wounded by guided aerial bomb attacks on the town of Vovchansk close to the border, Synegubov said later. He posted video from Vovchansk showing windows blown out of a multi-storey block of flats and shattered houses on fire.
The governor insisted there was «no threat of a ground operation» for the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest.
Groups of people fleeing the border area were arriving in vans and cars loaded with bags at a reception centre for evacuees near Kharkiv, journalists saw.
'Impossible to live there'
Evacuees —
