Fighting rages near Ukrainian city of Kharkiv as Russia reports deaths in border regions

Fierce fighting was raging on Saturday for control of several Ukrainian villages near close to the country’s eastern border with Russia.

Further north the Russian military sought to press home its attacks in the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, the region’s governor said. “As of now the enemy keeps pressing in the north of our region. Our forces have repelled nine attacks,” he told a media briefing.

Eslewhere, Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had taken five border villages in the Kharkiv region.

However, Syniehubov said clashes were ongoing in all five villages located within a zone little more than three miles from the Russian border.

Ukraine’s military said reinforcements were sent to the region to help stabilise positions and limit Russia’s advances after it launched its new offensive on Friday.

Syniehubov said regional authorities had evacuated more than 2,500 people from the frontier area and that process continued.

Top Ukrainian officials have repeatedly said they do not believe Russia has the capacity to launch a successful operation to capture the city of Kharkiv, which is home to 1.3 million people.

Meanwhile, five people were killed and nine wounded in three separate Ukrainian drone and artillery strikes on the Russian border provinces of Belgorod and Kursk, and the city of Donetsk, which Russia claims to have annexed, local officials said on Saturday.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of east Ukraine’s Donetsk region, said in a statement posted on the Telegram messaging app that three civilians had been killed and eight more injured when a Ukrainian missile struck a restaurant in Donetsk city.

Donetsk, which fell under the control of Russian-backed separatists in 2014, regularly came under Ukrainian shelling after Moscow ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, but became more secure after Kyiv’s troops were forced from its outskirts earlier this year.

Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a statement posted on Telegram that one man had been killed and another injured after a Ukrainian drone hit a parked truck in the border village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya.

His counterpart in neighbouring Kursk region, Roman Starovoit, said that a civilian had died in hospital after being wounded in a drone strike on the frontier town of Sudzha.

Both Belgorod and Kursk regions have come under regular attack since Moscow ordered tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Separately, a Moscow-installed official in Ukraine’s Luhansk region said that the death toll in a missile strike that caused a large fire with major damage at a fuel depot in the town of Rovenky had risen to four, with 11 injured.

Russia’s defence ministry said earlier on Saturday that it had intercepted a string of attempted Ukrainian drone and rocket artillery strikes on its territory.

In a statement posted on Telegram, the ministry said its forces had downed 21 rockets and 16 drones across Russia’s Belgorod, Kursk and Volgograd regions.