The Ukrainian General Staff has ordered the withdrawal of its troops near Kharkov to “avoid civilian casualties” and “save the lives of soldiers” as a result of the pressure of the Russian army in the region. Soldiers have withdrawn from two districts, Lukyantsiv and Vovchansk, where hand-to-hand fighting was already taking place in the streets. President Volodymyr Zelensky has canceled all of his commitments, including an official visit to Spain this coming Friday, due to a worsening of the war on the front that has surprised even the United States. The White House openly shows its fear that the Kremlin will gain in this relaunch of its operations the necessary momentum to change the course of the contest.
The last hours have been decisive for the withdrawal order, as can be seen from the messages broadcast by the armed forces just before the withdrawal. Defenders have counted up to eighteen Russian attacks around Kharkiv. Progress has become unsustainable when the last barriers in urban centers have fallen. «Active fighting continues on the streets of Vovchansk, the situation is extremely difficult. The enemy is taking up positions in the city streets. Citizens, please evacuate,” Volodymyr Tymoshko, head of the General Directorate of the National Police in the Kharkiv region, asked early this morning on state television. Tymoshko has ordered the mobilization of dozens of agents, including door-to-door, to help civilians in the eviction.
The spokesman for the General Staff, Dmytro Lykhova, has acknowledged that the situation is very complicated. The invaders are “concentrating their efforts in the Kharkiv region, as well as in the Kramatorsk and Pokrovsky directions”, in the heart of the Donetsk oblast, and their “fire and assault actions” have been the cause of the Ukrainian units retreating to “save lives” to positions they consider “more advantageous.”
The army has avoided commenting on the soldiers killed in the operation, but they are believed to be numerous. The Kremlin claims that 125 Ukrainians have died in Lukyantsiv alone and that in all the assaults carried out in the last day this death toll rises to a thousand, although information on casualties is usually very unreliable. In the offensive, the Russians would have destroyed several secret weapons warehouses where kyiv kept weapons from Western arsenals.
The Kharkov front has now become the main balance of the war. Lykhova has pointed out that, despite the withdrawal, the defenders keep the “enemy under constant control of the fire of our artillery and unmanned aerial vehicle units” in order to “prevent them from gaining a foothold” within the two occupied districts. For his part, the new Russian Defense Minister, Andrei Beloúsov, has declared that his current priority is to maintain the supply of missiles, drones, electronic warfare equipment and light weapons ammunition to the trenches to continue undermining the resistance. Ukrainian. Belousov takes advantage of evaluations such as that of the General Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine, whose top official, Kirill Budanov, has warned that the reserves of local troops are at minimum levels in Kharkiv.
From World War II to 2024
The region, the second most important in the country, carries a war legend that the invasion sadly revives. Hitler listed Kharkiv as one of his main targets during World War II thanks to its powerful industry, much of it military, and its status as the economic engine of the Soviet Union. The region was the scene of four major tank battles. Its inhabitants, almost a million, fled en masse. The city became part of those most devastated in the world war. It was reduced to rubble.
In 2022, the Russians took Kharkiv after a series of fierce clashes. During the subsequent counteroffensive, Ukraine recaptured the enclave in 2023. Since then, Kharkiv has been a spearhead for kyiv, which has been able to carry out harassment bombing raids on its enemies from this region. Its recovery is therefore strategic for the Kremlin, which presumably also seeks to concentrate the bulk of the Ukrainian army here to weaken other front lines, especially the one that keeps Chasiv Yar, another place desired by Moscow, protected. This is understood by at least some of the leading analysts in the United States, who do not rule out that Putin is orchestrating a general offensive for this summer in Donbas.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, has moved directly to the front to “make combat decisions” “based on complete information.” Syrsky communicates all his impressions to Zelensky several times a day. The president had planned to travel this Friday to Spain, where he was going to be received by King Felipe VI before meeting with the Government in search of military aid, but he has canceled his entire agenda due to the worsening of the situation in the north of Kharkiv. .
The White House is concerned that Russian troops are advancing in several directions in the Donbas at the same time, although it believes that these movements are still weak enough that Ukraine will not neutralize them when it rearms with equipment sent from the West. More worrying, however, are the successes in the technological field. US Intelligence admits that Moscow has developed different electronic warfare techniques that have wiped out much of the ammunition and attack drones supplied by the US and NATO allies. A gadget that seems to be especially effective is a decontrol system that manages to interfere with the guidance of missiles and drones to divert them towards innocuous areas.
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