Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Monday he had traveled to the front-line area of Vovchansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region near the Russian border, where Moscow’s forces have been trying to break through.

Russian troops opened a new front in the north of the region in May, rapidly making inroads up to 10 km (6 miles). Ukraine’s military later halted the offensive, one of the main thrusts of which had pushed towards the town of Vovchansk.

“Kharkiv front. The forward command post of the Special Operations Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in the area of Vovchansk,” Zelenskyy wrote on his X account.

He was shown presenting state awards to soldiers and shaking their hands in a photo posted alongside the statement.

The Ukrainian General Staff said Russia continued to conduct air strikes in the region’s border areas and that in the last 24 hours Kyiv’s forces had repelled six assaults near Vovchansk and the village of Hlyboke more than 30 km (19 miles) to the west.

Though Russia’s attacks in the eastern Donetsk region remain Moscow’s main offensive thrust, the assault into Kharkiv region has stretched Ukraine’s outmanned defenders and forced Kyiv to send in reinforcements.

Ukraine then successfully lobbied allies to allow it to use Western weapons for some strikes across the border from Kharkiv region. Kyiv says this has helped it to fend off advances by Russian forces, which are now more than 29 months into their full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Kyiv is now pressing its allies to lift restrictions preventing it from using Western weapons for strikes deep inside Russia on targets such as military airfields.

On his trip to the Kharkiv region, Zelenskyy also visited the town of Derhachi, about 15 km from the regional capital Kharkiv, his statement said. Both settlements have been frequently targeted by Russian missile and guided bomb attacks.

Russian advances

Russian forces are focusing their heaviest assaults near Ukraine’s strategic eastern city of Pokrovsk, Kyiv said on Monday, as Moscow bears down on a key Ukrainian supply route more than 29 months since its full-scale invasion.

Fighting on the Pokrovsk front was the fiercest anywhere in the war-scarred east, the General Staff said in a regular battlefield update, adding that Ukraine had fought off 52 Russian assaults there in the last 24 hours.

Pokrovsk, a transport hub with a pre-war population of 61,000, lies on a main road that serves as an important supply route to other embattled Ukrainian-held outposts, such as the towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region. Some residents have fled during the war, but others have settled there after fleeing elsewhere.

“As of today, the city is 20 km (12 miles) from the front line,” Serhiy Dobriak, head of the city’s military administration, told U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Europe.

To the northeast of the city, Russian troops have advanced even closer to the strategic road. On Saturday, Moscow claimed control of the village of Lozuvatske, which lies about 6 km from it. Ukraine did not comment on the claim.

Dobriak said many of Pokrovsk’s residents were reluctantly deciding to evacuate. He put the current population at 60,000, including 4,000 children.

“The greatest concentration of enemy attacks was around Zhelanne and Novooleksandrivka,” Ukraine’s General Staff said, referring to two villages that lie to the east of Pokrovsk.

Russia’s defense ministry said that its forces had also taken the villages of Prohres, Yevhenivka and Vovche. All three settlements lie east of Pokrovsk. Kyiv did not comment on the claim.

Donetsk’s regional governor said at least three people had been killed and three others wounded in Russian shelling of Toretsk, another town reeling from heavy fighting in recent weeks.

Dobriak said civilians from Toretsk were evacuating to Pokrovsk.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and still occupies nearly a fifth of Ukraine. Ukrainian forces repelled the Russians from the outskirts of Kyiv early in the war and recaptured territory in the east and south later in 2022. But since a failed counteroffensive in 2023, Kyiv’s troops have mainly been on the defensive this year.

Source: voanews.com