KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine said its forces had slowed the Russian advance in the war’s new hotspot as Moscow said Friday a massive wave of drones attacked several regions including occupied Crimea.
A week after Russian troops swept over the border, taking a dozen villages and opening a new front in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Kyiv and its allies sounded optimistic that it could prevent a sweeping summer of setbacks while awaiting new U.S. military aid.
The new offensive, which began a week ago, has raised fears that Ukraine’s second-largest city could even be vulnerable, but Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday he was aiming to carve out a buffer zone for his own embattled border regions.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his troops had stabilized the situation and that the Russians had advanced by no more than 6 miles into Ukrainian territory.
Russian forces had reached the first line of Ukraine’s defenses in the area, Zelenskyy said in a meeting with reporters late Thursday, adding that insufficient air defense had allowed the enemy to cross into the region under the cover of aerial bombs and artillery.
Zelenskyy said that the Russian military’s immediate goal was to seize the key town of Vovchansk, just three miles from the border, where the two sides have been locked in fierce street battles. Thousands of residents have been forced to evacuate from the border area, though Ukraine’s military said Thursday it had stopped the Russian advance in Vovchansk.
The Kremlin’s new offensive in the northeast has largely been seen as an attempt to carve out a buffer zone around its border regions, which face frequent shelling. The incursion could also be aimed at drawing troops away from elsewhere on the front lines and further stretching an army that has long been depleted.
Speaking with reporters during his visit to China, Putin was asked if Russia’s goal was to capture the city of Kharkiv.
“There are no such plans today,” Putin said, in his first public comments on the offensive. He blamed Ukraine for what’s happening in the region, saying that its forces continued to shell residential areas of Russia’s border territories. “I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone. So that’s what we are doing,” Putin said.
His former defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, also said that Russia was advancing in every direction in Ukraine and it was “going quite well.”
“I hope that it will continue to be so,” Shoigu told state TV on Thursday while accompanying his boss in China. “For this purpose, certain reserves have been created in terms of people, equipment and ammunition.”
But Ukraine and its allies signaled that the Russian offensive could be contained.
“The Russians don’t have the numbers necessary to do a strategic breakthrough, we don’t believe,” said U.S. General Christopher Cavoli, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
“More to the point, they don’t have the skill and the capability to do it; to operate at the scale necessary to exploit any breakthrough to strategic advantage,” Cavoli told reporters Thursday, adding that he was confident that Ukrainians will hold the line.
Zelenskyy said in his nightly address after visiting the front that his forces “have managed to build confidence in the direction of Vovchansk.”
But Ukrainian officials say they expect new attacks elsewhere.
Army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said Friday the Russians had expanded the zone of combat in the region by 43 miles, trying to force Ukraine’s command to use additional reserves. Syrskyi said Russia launched the offensive “well ahead of schedule” but failed to break through Kyiv’s defense lines.
Still, he said he inspected units that are preparing to defend the neighboring Sumy region, raising the prospect that it could be the next focus for Moscow’s troops.
A sergeant based near the border community of Kozacha Lopan, 33 miles northwest of Vovchansk, told NBC News that Russian forces were shooting at them with artillery, rocket launchers and drones, but that there had been “no serious contact” yet in his position.
“They are probing us,” said the soldier, who goes by the call sign “Marine.” He also said he had seen much more intense fighting defending the Kharkiv region in May 2022 and later that year in the eastern Donbas region. “Now, we are all ready for battle,” he added.
In a sign that Ukraine would keep striking deep inside Russian-held territory, Moscow’s defense ministry said more than 100 drones were intercepted overnight Friday, half of them over the occupied Crimean Peninsula. It also said that six Ukrainian sea drones were destroyed in the Black Sea.
Russian-installed officials reported that the key port city of Sevastopol was experiencing a partial blackout after drone debris fell on a power station, forcing them to shut down schools and kindergartens for the day.
U.S. commercial satellite company Maxar also said that a long-range strike on the Belbek airbase in occupied Crimea destroyed three Russian warplanes and a fuel facility near its main runway earlier this week.
Ukraine does not normally claim responsibility for such attacks, though the Russian defense ministry reported strikes with long-range U.S.-supplied missiles known as ATACMS on Crimea earlier this week.
Drones also attacked the neighboring Krasnodar region, where an oil refinery caught fire, the Russian defense ministry said Friday, as well as the Belgorod and Kursk regions. Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov reported that two people, including a 4-year-old child, died in the overnight drone strikes.
Daryna Mayer reported from Kyiv, and Yuliya Talmazan from London.
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