Ukraine strengthens calls for the evacuation of the Northeastern town that is under relentless Russian shelling

Ukrainian authorities over the weekend stepped up calls for civilians to evacuate from Kupiansk, a town just a few miles from the frontline in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region that has come under relentless Russian shelling.

Kupiansk is located about 65 miles southeast of Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv, which fell under Russian occupation in the early days of the war. The city was recaptured by Ukrainian forces in September in a counteroffensive that quickly drove Russian forces out of much of the area and helped change the dynamics of the conflict in Ukraine’s favor.

Since then, Kupiansk and nearby villages have been the subject of frequent Russian shelling, one of the current pressure points on the front line.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of the regional military administration, said on Saturday that Kupiansk was the “hottest” site of fighting in the province.

“Enemy forces are constantly trying to attack the positions of our forces. That’s why we declared a mandatory evacuation,” he said on national television. “We are trying to explain this to local residents,” he said, adding that local authorities and volunteer groups are trying to move people to safer locations in the country. elsewhere in the Kharkiv region.

While the devastated city of Bakhmut, about 80 miles southeast of Kupiansk, for months was the focus of a Russian offensive centered on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, Moscow has ramped up artillery positions. along many points of the front line. Ukrainian authorities have been reporting for days an increase in shelling in the Kharkiv region as well as further south.

In an overnight speech, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called the Kharkiv region one of a number of places that suffer “brutal” attacks “daily, nightly”.

“Since the beginning of this year alone, in less than two and a half months, more than 40 enemy missiles have hit Kharkiv,” he said, referring to Kharkiv city, the regional capital. He said that Russia is using all kinds of weapons – “missiles and artillery, drones and mortars” – with a single target. “To destroy life and leave nothing for humans.”

Mr. Zelensky also pointed to the cities of the Donbas region, which he said “Russia simply wants to burn”.

Military analysts say that, although Russia has achieved little concrete territorial interest in the Donbass offensive, it has succeeded in making it impossible for Ukraine to restore daily life in areas where they occupied. Mines laid by retreating Russian troops are also a problem for civilians in the Kharkiv region.

On the eastern front, Russia attacked positions including those near Bakhmut and Lyman, the Ukrainian military said in its update Sunday morning. Ukrainian forces “repelled” 92 attacks in those areas.

In Bakhmut, where Russian forces have controlled much of the eastern part of the city in recent days, the fierce nature of the battle was evident again on Saturday, when the Russians made no progress toward west. according to the Institute of War Studiesa research group based in Washington.

Elsewhere, Russian attacks on the Kherson region of southern Ukraine killed at least three civilians and wounded three others on Saturday, according to Ukrainian officials. Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional military administration, said in a post on the messaging app Telegram that Russia had fired 156 projectiles in the past day into the area. Russian air strikes on the southern city of Zaporizhia also damaged an industrial facility and a gas pipeline.

“Russian shelling took the lives of people in Kherson who were simply going to a store to buy groceries,” Zelensky said. said in his nightly address. “In Zaporizhzhia, a Russian missile hit the city’s life support facility,” he added, without providing details.

Ukrainian officials and military analysts have suggested that Zaporizhia region could be the focus of a long-anticipated Ukrainian counter-offensive in the coming weeks as part of efforts by Kiev forces to advance toward the Russian-controlled port city of Melitopol.

In anticipation of such a move, “Russian forces continue to establish fortifications in Zaporizhzhia,” according to the report. War Research InstituteISW thinks this could be an attempt to better secure the highways leading to Tokmak, a logistics hub near Melitopol.

Capturing territory around Melitopol could allow Ukrainian forces to cut off the Russian line of control that extends from the Crimean Peninsula to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.