Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that a Russian missile attack on a hardware supermarket in Kharkiv killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more, a day after Moscow’s troops were gathering to prepare for a new ground offensive in northeastern Ukraine. .
“Russia is the only source of aggression and constantly tries to expand the war,” Zelensky said in English, speaking from the ruins of a publishing house in Kharkiv that was destroyed in a Russian attack last week.
“Russia is preparing offensive operations about 60 miles northwest of Kharkiv,” he said, adding that Moscow was massing “another group of troops” near our border. Zelensky did not provide further details about the potential attack.
On May 10, Moscow’s troops surged into Ukraine’s northeastern border, broke through Ukraine’s defense lines, and occupied villages close to the border, surprising Ukraine. This forced the Kiev government to urgently send reinforcements to stop the Russian attack.
Based on Zelenskyy’s comments, one of the targets of the attack could be the Sumy region in northeastern Ukraine, which has been the scene of frequent cross-border fighting since Russian forces tried to seize its main city, also known as Sumy, but that did not happen Ground attack. The Ukrainian military had previously warned that Russia’s northeastern border would be attacked again. Ukrainian border service spokesman Andrei Demchenko told Ukrainian television on Sunday that the Russian troops massed near the border did not appear to be sufficient to launch a large-scale attack.
But the Washington-based Institute for War Studies said even a limited increase in Russian military activity near the border “could lead to the stretching of Ukrainian forces across a wider front”. The institute said last week that this would be the case even if Russia was only “threatening to penetrate” border areas beyond Kharkiv.
The May invasion was the most significant in months of fighting, and military experts said a key goal for Russia was to expand the length of a battlefield that already stretches hundreds of miles and force Ukraine to spread its forces even more widely. Experts say Moscow clearly hopes to expand its existing advantage in the size of its military by doing so.
The war has had its ups and downs since Russian President Vladimir V. Putin launched his invasion, and Ukrainian forces are currently defending areas east of Donetsk, northeast and south of the Zaporizhzhia region against Russian advances.
Kharkiv was one of the immediate victims, with the intensity of Russian airstrikes escalating sharply this month, forcing many to flee. The death toll from Sunday’s attack on a hardware supermarket rose to 16, with 43 others injured, according to a social media post from the region’s military administration.
Firefighters extinguished the supermarket blaze and 200 emergency personnel were dealing with the aftermath of the attack, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the region’s military administration.
Ukrainian police released a brief video on Sunday that they said showed the inside of the store at the time of the attack. Photos show customers calmly browsing a display of bathroom furniture such as toilets and sinks, with store workers wearing blue T-shirts standing nearby. Suddenly, there was a flash of light and shadow, and the scene disappeared. There has been no independent confirmation of the video’s authenticity.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said the attack was aimed at ensuring minimal civilian casualties. “He could not capture Kharkiv, so he tried to kill it,” Kuleba wrote on social media, referring to Putin.
The Russian Defense Ministry’s Telegram social media channel has commented extensively on the fighting in recent days but, as is customary, has not commented on the Kharkiv attack or other incidents reported by Ukrainian officials.
Kuleba called on Ukraine’s NATO allies to provide Ukraine with more Patriot missiles and other systems that can defend against missile attacks.
A multibillion-dollar military aid package has been stalled in the U.S. Congress for months, leaving Ukraine short of ammunition and increasingly vulnerable to Russian missile and drone attacks. The plan was finally approved last month, but much of the hardware has yet to arrive in Ukraine.
Mr. Sinehupov reported a second attack on Saturday that demonstrated Kharkiv’s vulnerability, saying it hit civilian commercial infrastructure in the city center just hours after the supermarket attack. At least 25 people were injured, including a 14-year-old boy who was hospitalized, according to the district attorney’s office. Russian authorities had no comment.
Russia has also launched attacks outside its usual battlefields of late. Vitaliy Kim, chief of the military administration of the Mykolayev region in southern Ukraine, said the exploding drone damaged a kindergarten building there, while Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne reported in the central region Explosions in the Khmelnytsky region.
Speaking in Kharkiv, Zelensky called on President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend a Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland next month. Kiev is trying to drum up global support for a framework that would involve the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory and an end to attacks on Ukrainian territory.