The Russian retreat was seen near Kharkiv, despite the victory day’s push to make a profit

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine – Russia’s push for its president to showcase victory in Ukraine appeared to face a new set of setbacks on Saturday, as Ukrainian defense forces pushed back invaders towards the southern border. northeast and left Kharkiv, with the Russians blowing the bridges behind them.

With less than 48 hours left before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is due to lead his country in Victory Day celebrations commemorating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany, Russia’s apparent retreat from The area around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, contradicts the Russian narrative and illustrates the complex picture along a 300-mile front in eastern Ukraine.

The Russians have been trying to advance in eastern Ukraine for the past few weeks and have been particularly motivated as Victory Day approaches, but Ukrainian forces – armed with new weapons led by the United States and other Western nations offer – have repel in a counterattack.

According to a Ukrainian military report, the destruction of three bridges by the Ukrainian army, about 12 kilometers northeast of Kharkiv, shows that the Russians are not only trying to prevent Ukraine from pursuing them, but also have no plan. return immediately.

A senior Ukrainian official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the fighting, said Russian forces were destroying the bridges not to retreat but because “we are pushing them out.”

He said that the battle for Kharkiv was not over yet, and that although “we are dominating” Russian forces were trying to regroup and launch the offensive.

Some military analysts say Russia’s actions are similar to what the Russian military did last month when it withdrew from the city of Chernihiv north of Kyiv.

Frederick W. KaganA military historian and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based public policy research group, said Russia’s strategy near Kharkiv could be an indication of “an order to withdraw.” somewhere has been launched and they are trying to establish a line of defense. ”

Ukrainian forces have recaptured a series of towns and villages on the outskirts of Kharkiv over the past week, putting them in position to dislodge Russian forces from the area and regain full control of the city “within days” “, according to recent analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, a research group based in Washington.

The setback is now forcing the Russian military to choose whether to send reinforcements elsewhere in eastern Ukraine to help defend positions on the outskirts of Kharkiv, the institute said.

The passage around Kharkiv as part of a more complex battlefield in eastern Ukraine has left more and more towns and cities trapped in the “gray zone”, trapped between Russian and Ukrainian forces, where they frequently faced indiscriminate, sometimes indiscriminate shelling.

“The Russian occupiers continue to destroy the civilian infrastructure of the Kharkiv region,” the regional governor, Oleh Sinegubov, said in a Telegram post on Saturday, adding that the shelling and artillery attacks during the night targeted several districts, destroying a national museum in the village. by Skovorodynivka.

For Russia, perhaps the best example of anything resembling a victory is the long-besieged, southeastern port city of Mariupol. Although much of the city was destroyed by Russian bombardment, there are growing signs that Russian control of the city is nearing completion.

The intelligence directorate of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said in a statement on Saturday that Russian officers had been removed from their combat positions and sent to guard a Russian military parade being held. planned in Mariupol.

Petro Andrushchenko, an adviser to the city council, posted a series of photos on Telegram on Friday that appear to show how Russian forces are restoring “relics of the Soviet era” across the city.

An image appeared to show the Russian flag flying above the intensive care hospital. Another image, posted on Thursday, shows city workers replacing Ukrainian road signs with ones in Russian script. The images cannot be verified.

On Friday, 50 people were evacuated from the city’s Azovstal steel plant, the last station of Ukrainian forces and a group of civilians in the city. The city’s police chief, Mikhailo Vershinin, said three Ukrainian soldiers were killed Friday in an attempt to evacuate civilians from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

Mr. Vershinin, who was at the plant, said via a messaging app on Saturday that rockets and grenades were to blame. “Six people were injured, some seriously,” he said, “and in the makeshift factory hospital, “no drugs, no anesthesia, no antibiotics, and they could die.”

Both Ukrainian and Russian officials said on Saturday that all evacuations of civilians from the Mariupol plant had been completed.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Red Cross or the United Nations, which helped coordinate recent evacuations from the plant. A Red Cross spokesman said earlier on Saturday that efforts to evacuate the remaining civilians were “ongoing”.

In another development, Russia carried out six missile strikes on Saturday against Odesa, Ukraine’s Black Sea port, according to the city council. Four hit a furniture company and destroyed two high-rises in the blast, and two rockets were fired at the city’s airport, which was downed by a Russian missile last week.

The goal of Russian forces – at least for now – appears to be to capture as much of eastern Ukraine as the Donbas, by expelling Ukrainian forces that have been fighting Russian-backed separatists. for many years in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. . Since the Russian invasion began on February 24, about 80% of those two provinces have come under the control of the Kremlin.

The governor of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine, Serhiy Haidai, said on Facebook on Saturday that a Russian bomb had hit a school in the village of Bilogorivka, where about 90 people had taken shelter. About 30 people have been saved so far, he said. The bodies of at least two people have been recovered from the rubble, according to Ukraine’s Emergencies Service. Rescue operations were suspended Saturday night and will resume Sunday, officials said.

The governor of the region, Serhiy Haidai, said Russian forces were trying to break through Ukraine’s lines and surround troops defending the area around the eastern but currently controlled city of Sievierodonetsk.

“It’s a war so anything can happen, but right now the situation is difficult but under control,” Haidai said in a phone interview. “They’ve broken through in some places and these areas are being reinforced.”

The Russians appeared “unable to successfully siege the town”, according to the latest update from the Institute for the Study of War.

The Russian military’s apparent aim is to capture Sievierodonetsk or cut it off from most of the Ukrainian forces fighting in the east, and continue pushing south toward the large industrial city of Kramatorsk.

Haidai said the Russian military deployed units that were better trained and had more combat experience than the Russian soldiers who were initially thrown into the invasion.

“Initially, they sent new soldiers from the occupied territory,” he said. “But they cannot fight. They don’t wear thin coats. And so they just died by the dozens or hundreds. But they are running out of these. ”

Mr. Haidai said he had appealed to anyone who could evacuate, but about 15,000 people remained in Sievierodonetsk. Some, he said, are older and “want to die where they were born”.

By contrast in the capital Kyiv and much of the western part of the country, the atmosphere seems far removed from the constant bombardment of war – despite the occasional and unpredictable Russian missile strikes. before can. Cars have returned to Kyiv’s streets and those who live there have resumed some of their normal routines.

Obviously concerned about complacency, President Volodymyr Zelensky reminded people to heed the local curfew and seriously warn of air strikes.

“Please, this is your life, your children’s life,” he pleaded with Ukrainians in an overnight address.

Resident towns and villages in the east of the country are often shaken awake with bomb attacks, usually between 4am and 5am.

On Saturday morning, the small village of Malotaranivka was targeted. A bomb struck around 4:15 a.m., blowing up homes and a small bakery, leaving a crater at least 15 feet deep and a wide radius of destruction. While no one was killed, residents expressed anger at the Russians.

“What kind of military target is this?” Tatyana Ostakhova, 38, spoke through a hole in her goddaughter’s apartment where she was helping clean. “A shop that sells bread so people don’t die of hunger?”

Such attacks have occurred with greater frequency during the prelude to Victory Day in Russia, which Mr. Putin is expected to use as a platform for some sort of announcement about what he so-called “special military operations” in Ukraine.

Svetlana Golochenko, 43, who was cleaning up what was left of her son’s house, said: “It’s like we’re in a dream. “It’s hard to imagine that this is happening to us.”

Malotaranivka is a small village of single-family houses and wooden-frame apartment buildings about 8 km from Kramatorsk. Residents said that other than a few checkpoints, there was no military presence in the area, making the Russian bombings all the more confusing.

Artur Serdyuk, 38, whose head was full of dust and smoked a cigarette after spending the morning cleaning up what was left of his house, said.

Mr Serdyuk said he had just returned to bed after going out to smoke in the middle of the night when the explosion happened. The explosion blew off the roof of his house and burned down his house, leaving nothing but a roll of toilet paper lying in a pile of dust near the hole in the latrine.

His neighbor’s house was opened up like a doll’s house, allowing reporters to peek into the rest of the kitchen decorated with wallpaper featuring green peacocks.

Michael Schwirtz reported from Sloviansk, and Cora Engelbrecht and Megan Specia report from London. Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Tblisi, Georgia.