Fierce fighting raged into a second day on the fringes of Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region on Saturday as Moscow said it had captured five villages, while Kyiv said it was repulsing the attacks and battling for control of the settlements.
Russia launched the armoured incursion early on Friday, an attack on a new front that may presage a broader push into Kharkiv region or aim to draw away overstretched Ukrainian forces from where Moscow's offensive is focused in the east.
Kyiv has been on the back foot on the battlefield for months as Russian troops have slowly advanced mainly in the Donetsk region to the south, taking advantage of Ukraine's shortages of troop manpower and artillery shells.
The Russian defence ministry told a briefing that Moscow's forces had taken the Kharkiv region villages of Pletenivka, Ohirtseve, Borysivka, Pylna and Strilecha across the border from Russia's Belgorod region.
But Kharkiv's governor Oleh Syniehubov said that active fighting continued on the territory of all five of the frontier villages that are located within three to five kms (1.9-3.1 miles) of the border.
"We clearly understand what forces the enemy is using in the north of our territory. Certainly, the escalation can grow, the pressure can increase, it can strengthen its military units, its military presence," he said.
In his nightly address on Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops had been carrying out counterattacks in border villages in Kharkiv region.
"Disrupting Russian offensive plans is now our number one task," he said.
'Impossible to live there'
As the fighting intensified, groups of people fleeing the border area were arriving in vans and cars loaded with bags at a reception centre for evacuees near Kharkiv.
Evacuees – many of them elderly – received food and medical assistance and could sleep in bunk beds.
One 61-year-old woman, Lyubov Nikolaieva, told AFP she had fled the border village of Lyptsi along with her 81-year-old mother.
"It's impossible to live there," said Nikolaieva, adding that her family "stayed there until the last moment" without gas or electricity.
"There is constant incoming fire: those guided aerial bombs and mortar shells whistling overhead. It became very scary," she said.
An aid worker helping evacuate residents, Dmytro Tkachenko, 37, told AFP: "There is a really hard, difficult situation in the directions of Vovchansk and Lyptsi.
"There is some (troop) movement and at the moment, it really complicates the evacuation from these areas, because it's really dangerous."
'Saves lives'
The Kharkiv region has been mostly under Ukrainian control since September 2022.
Zelensky said Saturday troops must "return the initiative to Ukraine" and urged Kyiv's allies to speed up arms deliveries.
"Every air-defence system, every anti-missile system is literally what saves lives," Zelensky said.
"It is important that our partners support our soldiers and Ukrainian resilience with timely deliveries – really timely ones," he added.
"The package that really helps is the weapons brought to Ukraine, not just the announced ones."
Ukrainian forces have multiplied attacks inside Russia and Russia-held areas of Ukraine, particularly on energy infrastructure.
Also Saturday, a missile strike killed three people when it hit a restaurant called Paradise in the Russian-held city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.
The attack using US HIMARS precision rocket launchers killed two diners and a restaurant worker and wounded nine, officials from the Russian-backed administration said.
'Not a big offensive'
Officials in Kyiv had warned for weeks that Moscow might try to attack its northeastern border regions, pressing its advantage as Ukraine struggles with delays in Western aid and manpower shortages.
Ukraine's military said it had deployed reserve units "to strengthen the defence in these areas of the front".
Military expert Olivier Kempf told AFP Saturday that Russia's ground operation was most likely aimed at creating a buffer zone near its Belgorod region, recently raided by pro-Ukrainian units, or diverting Ukraine's resources from the Donetsk region.
"Twenty-four hours after the launch of the operations, it doesn't look like a big offensive," said the associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, a French think tank.
Washington announced a new $400 million military aid package for Kyiv hours after the offensive began, and said it was confident Ukraine could repel any fresh Russian campaign.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)
