There is growing belief that this attack is intended to take whatever ground is possible but that its primary objective is to get Ukraine to divert forces from Avdiivka and Chasiv Yar where, despite their material advantages, Russian units have, to their embarrasment, been unable to make any significant gains. JL
Marc Santora and colleagues report in the New York Times:
Russian attacks on Ukraine's northern border went beyond probing. (But) in recent months residents have reported an influx of troops around the Kharkiv and Sumy borders. White House officials said Friday they did not expect Russia’s push at the border to achieve major battlefield gains. “We have been anticipating Russia would launch an offensive against Kharkiv, which appears to have begun. We’ve been coordinating closely with Ukraine to help them prepare. We do not anticipate breakthroughs." Ukrainian and Western military officials have said Moscow lacks the combat power to capture KharkivUkraine rushed reinforcements to its northern border on Friday after Russian forces attempted to break through Ukrainian lines along several sections, applying new pressure on forces already stretched thin along a 600-mile front.
The Russian assaults began around 5 a.m. Friday with massive shelling and aerial bombardments of Ukrainian positions followed by armored columns trying to punch through at several points along the border, according to a statement from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense.
“As of now, these attacks have been repelled, and battles of varying intensity are ongoing,” the ministry said. “To strengthen the defense in this sector of the front, reserve units have been deployed.”
The breadth and intent of the Russian border incursions remained unclear. Military analysts have said Russia may be trying to force Ukraine to expend valuable resources in defending the region just as Russian assaults in eastern Ukraine are intensifying.
But a senior Ukrainian commander, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the current state of fighting, said on Friday that the Russian attacks went beyond probing or intelligence gathering. The commander said the Kremlin’s immediate goal appeared to be to create a buffer zone along the border.
After heavy battles raged overnight and into the morning, smaller skirmishes continued into the evening as Russia sought to solidify control over several small villages located right on the border, a Ukrainian official familiar with the fighting said. While there are few civilians left in the areas that came under attack, at least one resident of the town of Vovchansk was killed in shelling, local officials said, and several more were wounded.
The opening of a new zone of fighting would present a steep challenge for Ukraine. It is unclear how deep the Ukrainian defenses at the border extended, how well they were manned and how they would hold up if Russia were to mount sustained offensive operations in this direction.
New deliveries of powerful Western weapons are on their way to Ukraine, but commanders say they have not arrived in numbers that would make a significant impact. In the meantime, military analysts have said, Russia is likely to try to take advantage of the window before the weapons arrive in force to press new advances.
As they announced a new military aid package for Ukraine, White House officials said on Friday that they did not expect Russia’s push at the border to achieve major battlefield gains.
“We have been anticipating that Russia would launch an offensive against Kharkiv, which appears now to have begun,” said John F. Kirby, a White House national security spokesman. “We’ve been coordinating closely with Ukraine to help them prepare. At this time, we assess that Russia has intensified cross-border fires and launched initial incursions.”
Mr. Kirby said that in the coming weeks, “Russia will likely increase the intensity of fires and commit additional troops” to establish a shallow buffer zone but added “we do not anticipate any major breakthroughs."
Ukrainian officials and Western military analysts have also said that Moscow probably lacks the combat power to capture Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, which is 20 miles from the Russian border.
Russian officials have not commented on the incursions.
It was unclear if Russia had captured any territory. The senior Ukrainian commander said that Kyiv’s forces had stopped one Russian attack in the direction of a village called Lyptsi, less than a mile from the border in the Kharkiv region. That area was now considered a gray zone, meaning the fighting was too intense and the situation too fluid to say who had control over the land.
For Russia, even establishing a bridgehead across the border could expose the city of Kharkiv to artillery, allowing troops to escalate efforts to make the city unlivable. And it would help create a secure area that Russia could use as a staging point for deploying personnel and weaponry.
It would also let Russia protect towns and cities across the border from Ukrainian shelling.
The Kharkiv regional administration urged people from the villages close to the border to evacuate. Some, like Vovchansk, which has been badly shelled throughout the war, have been nearly empty for months.
A doctor at the hospital in Vovchansk, which is about four miles from the Russian border, said there was intense fighting all around the small town. “We’re currently evacuating people from the hospital,” he said, asking that his name not be used because he feared for his safety. “They’re hitting very hard and destroying everything.”
He said that Ukrainian soldiers appeared to be preventing an advance into the town but that the Russians were attacking tanks, armored fighting vehicles and warplanes. Many of the small villages in the border regions have been being evacuated for months as shelling intensified and Ukrainian officials said on Friday those efforts were continuing.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, during a briefing in Kyiv with his Slovak counterpart, Zuzana Caputova, said that Russian forces were met with “our troops, brigades and artillery,” adding: “There is a fierce battle in this direction — we met them with fire.”
On Friday afternoon the Biden administration announced a $400 million shipment of air defense interceptors, artillery ammunition, Bradley fighting vehicles and other arms to Ukraine.
The latest weapons package — which includes Patriot anti-missile interceptors, 155-millimeter artillery shells, Stinger anti-aircraft and Javelin anti-tank missiles — comes about two weeks after the administration said it was rushing more than $1 billion in arms and ammunitions to Ukraine. That followed congressional approval of $60.8 billion in military aid to Kyiv that had been stymied for months by House Republicans.
Russian forces failed to take Kharkiv city in the first weeks of the war and were almost completely driven out of the region in a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the fall of 2022. Hundreds of thousands of people who fled the city returned to their homes and started to rebuild their lives.
But in recent months, Russia has stepped up its bombardment of the city, targeting it almost daily with missiles, drones and powerful guided bombs that have taken aim at energy infrastructure, important industries and residential neighborhoods.
At the same time, Russia has increased the number of soldiers it has moved to the border.
The Ukrainian military has responded by fortifying its defenses along vast stretches of the border and residents have reported seeing an influx of troops around the Kharkiv and Sumy borders.
Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the nation’s top military commander, had said recently that the Russians were likely to be planning new offensive operations but that he was confident in the Ukrainian defenses along the border, noting the army had already fought the Russians once in the Kharkiv region and won
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