Russia bombarded Kharkov, Ukraine sent emergency reinforcements

(Dan Tri) – Ukraine admits that Russian forces have the upper hand in the fighting near the city of Kharkov.

Ukrainian soldiers exercise near the Donetsk defense line (Photo: Reuters).

Russia launched a large-scale attack on the Kharkiv region in Ukraine on the morning of May 11, conducting air and artillery raids on Ukrainian lines before sending troops across the border.

Dozens of villages and settlements have been controlled by Russia, with the Russian Ministry of Defense reporting the capture of a series of areas including Gatische, Krasnoe, Morokhovets and Oleynikovo in a news release on May 12.

As of May 12, fighting continued in the town of Volchansk, while Ukrainian sources confirmed that Russia had entered the village of Liptsi, located less than 20km from the outskirts of Kharkov.

`Currently, the enemy has had tactical success` in the battle for Volchansk, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a statement on social networks.

With Russian forces attacking Volchansk from the east and Liptsi from the north, `the operational situation remains difficult and is changing dynamically in the Kharkov direction,` the statement added.

Location of Kharkiv region on the map of Ukraine (Photo: UW).

The New York Times reported that Russia’s advances forced Ukraine to quickly redeploy forces from the Donbass front.

In a Facebook post, Denis Yaroslavsky, a Ukrainian commander operating in the region, complained that his superiors had not built enough defensive barriers to repel the Russians.

`The first line of fortifications and mines do not exist. The enemy freely enters the gray area across the border,` the Ukrainian commander commented.

By `gray zone`, Yaroslavsky is referring to the land between the Russian border and Ukraine’s main defense line around Kharkiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on May 11 that  Kiev forces had `calculated everything` and were ready to repel Russia’s advance.

The Ukrainian army announced the deployment of additional reserve units to Kharkov, where Russian forces are approaching the city in the northeastern part of the country.

Tass news agency (Russia) also quoted a source in the Russian military as saying that some Ukrainian units from the Krasnoarmeysk area of ​​Donetsk appear to have been moved north to Kharkov.

Similar reports published on May 12 said Kiev had redeployed reserve forces from Russia’s Konstantinovka region to the northern front line.

According to Bloomberg, Kiev has begun deploying more troops to stabilize the northeastern front line, noting that Russia’s attack may have stretched Ukraine’s already under-armed and numerically depleted forces, and

The New York Times said that Russia’s control of Kharkiv could `demoralize Ukrainian forces and their allies` and `create the impression that after two years of hundreds of thousands of casualties and billions of