Russia has reduced offensive operations in northeastern Kharkiv Oblast despite still regrouping troops in the area and eyeing a further advance, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on June 8.
The statement comes nearly a month after Russia opened a new front in Kharkiv Oblast’s border areas. Heavy fighting rages on for Vovchansk, a town occupied by Russian troops in 2022 – and now largely reduced to ruins by intense glide bomb attacks.
Speaking on television, Syniehubov said Russian troops were still conducting “constant assaults” in the villages of Synkivka and Andriivka, which border largely Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast.
“The shelling doesn’t stop either,” Syniehubov said, as quoted by Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform.
Since launching a new offensive on May 10 in Kharkiv Oblast, Russian forces control a handful of villages on two seperate axes, one near the town of Vovchansk and the other towards the village of Lyptsi, where they have advanced a maximum of just 10 kilometers from the state border.
Ukrainian forces control about 70% of the town as of May 31, Nazar Voloshyn, the spokesperson of the Khortytsia group of forces, told Hromadske Radio.
Francis Farrell
