Russian troops put Kharkov back in the spotlight

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The Ukrainian military has launched several counter-offensives to try to regain the 30 kilometers of territory separating this metropolis from the border with Russia.

Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine after Kiev, managed to avoid being taken by Russian forces, despite heavy bombing and seeing much of its buildings and infrastructure destroyed. But now the nightmare is repeating itself. Rockets and bombs fall again as the Russian army approaches with the apparent intent to besiege the city.

This is what the adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior, Vadim Denisenko, believes in statements to national television. In his words, “Russia is trying to make Kharkov a frontline city.” Shortly afterwards, the Russian Ministry of Defense confirmed that a tank repair factory in Kharkiv had been attacked with missiles.

And it is that, from Kharkov, the Ukrainian army has launched several counter-offensive to try to recapture the 30 kilometers of territory that separates this metropolis from the border with Russia. The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) says Ukrainian units are preparing to launch a counter-offensive west of Izium to close off Russian lines of communication as they fight to defend Kharkov further northwest.

The adviser to the Ukrainian presidency, Oleksiy Arestovich, estimates that Russian forces are also trying to move Ukrainian artillery out of the Kharkov area so as not to attack the railway supplying them. Kharkiv, which had just over 1.4 million inhabitants before the war, is almost entirely Russian-speaking. At the end of February it almost fell into Russian hands, but the defenders managed to repel the offensive.

Meanwhile, intense armed clashes continue in Severodonetsk, in the Lugansk region. According to the governor of the area, Sergei Gaidai, the Ukrainian soldiers managed to “stop the attack around Toshkivka (…) the enemy withdrew,” he wrote on Facebook, denying that the Russians had completely taken Severodonetsk. “It’s true they control most of the city, but not all of it,” he said.

In an interview with the German newspaper Bild, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg confirms that the conflict in Ukraine could last for “years”, but emphasizes the need to “not give up” and continue to support Kiev. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson thinks the same in a column in The Times. According to him, “we must prepare for a long war.”

Meanwhile, according to information from the Russian agency TASS, the heads of the Azov battalion, which Moscow considers neo-Nazi, have been transferred to Moscow for questioning and are in Lefórtovo’s pre-trial detention.

After two and a half months of resistance at the Azovstal steel mill in Mariúpol, all the fighters of the Azov battalion surrendered in May thanks to an agreement between the UN and the Red Cross, which provides for their exchange for Russian prisoners. However, the leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denís Pushilin, warns that many of them could be sentenced to death, a sentence already handed down this month for three brigade members, two British and one Moroccan.

Source: La Verdad

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