Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Sept 9 (AFP\/APP): Russia said on Friday it was dispatching reinforcements to the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces have announced robust gains as part of a broader counter-offensive.<\/p>\n
State media broadcast footage of columns of Russian tanks, support vehicles and artillery travelling along paved roads and dirt tracks, emblazoned with the letter “Z”, the symbol of Moscow’s invasion.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said meanwhile that Russia’s push to send reinforcements showed Moscow was paying “huge costs” in its bid to capture and then hold Ukrainian territory.<\/p>\n
A Moscow-installed official in the region, Vitaliy Ganchev, said in televised remarks that “fierce battles” were under way near Balakliya, a town in the Kharkiv region that Ukraine said it had recaptured on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“We do not control Balakliya. Attempts are being made to dislodge the Ukrainian forces, but there are fierce battles and our troops are being held back on the approaches,” Ganchev said.<\/p>\n
“Now Russian reserves have been brought there, our troops are fighting back,” he added.<\/p>\n
His comments come after President Volodymyr Zelensky shared footage late Thursday showing camouflage-clad Ukrainian soldiers holding his country’s blue-and-yellow flag over Balakliya.<\/p>\n
The town, which had been under Russian control for around six months and had a pre-war population of around 30,000 people, fell easily and early on to Russian forces who invaded in February.<\/p>\n
Now, Russian officials in the Kharkiv region say they are evacuating civilians towards Russia “until the situation stabilises”.<\/p>\n
“We have been trying to focus all our efforts on evacuating the local population for three or four days,” Russian-appointed official Maxim Gubin said.<\/p>\n
– Donetsk shelling –<\/p>\n
On the Ukrainian side, the road from Kharkiv — the country’s second-largest city — heading southeast towards recaptured Balakliya was open Friday, AFP journalists said, with queues at several checkpoints and civilian and military vehicles dotting the road.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said Thursday that in total Ukraine’s army had clawed back from Russian forces some 1,000 square kilometres (nearly 400 square miles) since the beginning of the month.<\/p>\n
In the area around Kharkiv city, Ukrainian forces penetrated 50 kilometres (30 miles) beyond Russian lines and took back more than 20 towns and villages, military officials said earlier.<\/p>\n
The counter-offensive has shown progress in the south of the country too, particularly in the Kherson region, as well as in Kharkiv and in the industrial Donbas province in the east.<\/p>\n
“It’s very tough, but we are moving forward,” commander-in-chief General Valeriy Zaluzhny said Friday.<\/p>\n
Regional governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said that Russian attacks on the frontline city of Bakhmut killed eight people and wounded 17 others.<\/p>\n
Bakhmut, with an estimated population of 70,000, “has been without water and electricity for the fourth day,” he said, adding that “repairs are impossible due to ongoing fighting”.<\/p>\n
In one eastern Ukraine village, children have been adapting to their new reality, donning camouflage and manning pretend checkpoints.<\/p>\n
It is a game many children have been playing over the summer on roads throughout the war-torn Donbas and Kharkiv regions.<\/p>\n
“We stand here and stop cars to check if the people are Russian,” said Nazar, 11, putting on a menacing look.<\/p>\n
“We stop them and say: ‘the 93rd brigade salutes you'” he added, referring to a unit fighting in the northeast Kharkiv region near Russia.<\/p>\n
– Russian losses –<\/p>\n
Blinken’s comments on the cost of the war came during a visit to Brussels on Friday where he was meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg.<\/p>\n
Blinken said President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send reinforcements towards Kharkiv region underlined the scale of Russia’s military losses.<\/p>\n
“There are a huge number of Russian forces that are in Ukraine and unfortunately, tragically, horrifically President Putin has demonstrated that he will throw a lot of people into this at huge cost to Russia,” he said.<\/p>\n
His assessment comes just one day after a surprise visit to Kyiv during which he unveiled another $2.8 billion in military aid and hailed Ukraine’s “clear and real” frontline gains.<\/p>\n
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said during a visit to Prague that Ukrainian troops were using US-supplied weapons and “successfully changing the dynamics on the battlefield”.<\/p>\n
Key to the Ukrainian advances has been a steady stream of Western-donated weapons.<\/p>\n
Long-range precision artillery has played a crucial role, allowing Kyiv to disrupt Russian supply lines.<\/p>\n
“They’ve used those munitions… to begin to shape the battlespace in such a manner that they are changing the dynamics on the battlefield,” Austin said during a press conference with the Czech defence minister.<\/p>\n
“So we see success in Kherson now, we see some success in Kharkiv, and so that’s very, very encouraging,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kharkiv region, Ukraine, Sept 9 (AFP\/APP): Russia said on Friday it was dispatching reinforcements to the Kharkiv region in eastern Ukraine where Kyiv’s forces have announced robust gains as part of a broader counter-offensive. State media broadcast footage of columns of Russian tanks, support vehicles […]<\/p>\n
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