Ukraine battered by Russians’ push
Nation depleted and desperate for fresh troops
KHARKIV, ukraine — in the past three days, russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery, and lethal drones, have poured across ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning.
In some places, ukrainian troops are retreating, and ukrainian commanders are blaming each other for the defeats.
Thousands of ukrainian civilians are fleeing to kharkiv, the nearest big city. a reception center that hummed with a sense of order and calm saturday had been transformed into a totally different scene sunday as exhausted people shouted at each other and families with no place to go spilled out onto the grass.
As the sense of panic spreads, especially in kharkiv, some hard questions loom: how far will this go? is it just a momentary setback for the underdog ukrainians? Or a turning point?
Military experts say the russian advance has put ukraine in a very dangerous spot. ukrainian troops have been complaining for months about severe shortages of ammunition, which have been exacerbated by the tangles in the us congress that delayed the delivery of key weapons. and ukrainian soldiers, by all accounts, are exhausted.
More than two years of trying to fight off a country with three times the population to draw from has left ukraine so depleted and desperate for fresh troops that its lawmakers have voted to mobilize convicts, a controversial practice that ukraine had ridiculed russia for using in the first half of the war.
One ukrainian commander took the unusual step sunday of blasting his colleagues for what he said were terrible border defenses.
“The first line of fortifications and mines just didn’t exist,” wrote Denys Yaroslavsky, a reconnaissance commander, on facebook. “the enemy freely entered the gray area, across the border line, which in principle should not have been gray!”
(“Gray” areas are the contested zones between the russian and ukrainian front lines.)
Other ukrainian officials denied that the country’s forces were unprepared, saying that reports suggesting so were outright disinformation benefiting russia.
Yaroslavsky added that street fights had broken out in vovchansk, a small town near kharkiv, and that it was now surrounded.
“I say this because we can die and no one will hear the truth,” he wrote. “then why is it all for?!”
The city of kharkiv itself is safe — at the moment. it sits about 20 miles from the border. But just outside the city, people are running for their lives. the russians are pressing on Lyptsi, another small town that is even closer to kharkiv than vovchansk. residents who fled in evacuation vans sunday said the situation in Lyptsi was not looking good.
“For the last three days they were shelling us every 10 minutes,” said halyna surina, who escaped on sunday afternoon. “there was artillery, airplane bombs, and drones flying around. i could hear helicopters — and they were not our helicopters.”
Her voice was shaking and she could barely choke out the words.
Taking Lyptsi would put the russians within artillery range of kharkiv, a metropolis of more than 1 million people that was just struggling to come back to life. all this, for the ukrainians, is a bad case of déjà vu.
The russians created a similar situation in early 2022, storming across the northern border, occupying villages and small towns, and reaching the ring road that circumscribes kharkiv. for months, the people of this city endured artillery and missile strikes, and hundreds were killed. the tall, empty apartment buildings on the eastern side of town stand as scorched monuments to those deadly days.
Part of the russians’ plan with this overall attack, military analysts said, is to threaten kharkiv and force ukraine to divert troops from other battlefields, especially those in the eastern Donbas region.
And that’s exactly what is happening. a group of ukrainian soldiers were huddling at a gas station sunday afternoon, swigging energy drinks and trying to get the lay of the land. they looked tired. and they said they had just been redeployed from Donbas.
Despite such battlefield successes, president vladimir putin of russia announced sunday he had replaced his minister of defense with an economist, signaling his determination to put russia’s war effort on an economically sustainable footing.
Putin kept the minister, sergei shoigu, in his inner circle, tapping him to run the country’s security council. andrei Belousov, an economist who had served as first deputy prime minister since 2020 and long been seen as one of putin’s most trusted economic advisers, was nominated to become the new defense chief.