Russia launches major offensive in Kharkiv region

Russian troops on Friday launched a major attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, forcing Ukrainian troops to reposition and defend against a new front.

Russian forces appear to have launched the offensive from the Russia’s Belgorod region and are moving toward the town of Vovchansk, which lies north of Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reported that forces were defending strongholds in Kharkiv after Russian forces launched airstrikes and artillery fire ahead of an early morning armored vehicle offensive.

“As of now, these attacks have been repelled; battles of varying intensity continue,” the Ministry of Defense wrote on X. “Reserve units have been deployed to strengthen the defense in this area of the front. The Defense Forces of Ukraine continue to hold back the enemy’s offensive.”

Ukraine’s General Staff of the Armed Forces reported on Friday that troops had repelled 13 attacks in the Kharkiv region around the towns of Sinkivka, Petropavlivka and Berestov.

While the northern Kharkiv region has been a battleground in the war between Russia and Ukraine, most of the fighting has flared across the eastern and southeastern frontline in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhizhia and Kherson provinces.

Russia is putting intense pressure on Ukrainian forces across the frontline, making critical advances in the Donetsk region after a monthslong delay of new U.S. military aid to Kyiv.

Russian military blogger Rybar reported on Telegram that Russia began “massive attacks on planned targets” with artillery and mortar fire before troops advanced. But the blogger stressed it was premature to discuss significant progress or the capture of any towns as forces push toward Vovchansk.

George Barros, the Russia team and geospatial intelligence team lead at the Institute for the Study of War, said on X that Moscow’s attack may be a reconnaissance in force — a large maneuver meant to gain information about an enemy’s positions — or a “badly conducted combined arms attacks.”

Either way, the attack will put more strain on Ukraine on another front, as troops are already defending against Russian assaults across the eastern and southeastern battle lines.

Michael Kofman, a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told the “War on the Rocks” podcast earlier this week that if Russian forces can move closer to Kharkiv city, they could force a partial evacuation and create a “major problem.”

“While I don’t think Russia has the forces to take Kharkiv,” he said, “they may conduct an incursion to create the so-called buffer space that would effectively hold Kharkiv at risk and … it would be something Ukrainian forces have to deal with all the way up in the northeast that would then create a lot of challenges for them in sustaining the rest of the line.”