”Russian forces could launch a major attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, ” warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The Ukrainian leader said this while the Russian summer offensive is expected as early as next month.
”Kharkiv is one of the main cities of Ukraine, so it has a great symbolic meaning,” Zelenskyy told German newspaper Bild in an interview published on Wednesday.
Ukraine is “doing everything it can” to prevent Russian forces from entering and taking control of the country’s second-largest city, the Ukrainian president added.
In the early months of Russia’s all-out invasion, Moscow’s troops swept through the Kharkiv region before Ukraine’s blitzkrieg offensive in the fall of 2022 eased Russia’s grip on northeastern Ukraine. In the long months of the war that followed, the eastern part of the Kharkiv region remained on the front lines of the fighting and was often the target of bombing.
Ukrainian officials and Western analysts warned earlier this year that Russian forces could launch an offensive along several points of the front line, including the stretch from the city of Kupiansk to Kharkiv, which Ukraine recaptured in September 2022, west of the Russian-held towns of Svatova and Kreminno.
In later comments, Ukraine’s Zelenskiy said Russia could launch a summer offensive as early as the end of May, adding: “We will prepare for their attack.”
“A Russian ground operation against Kharkiv in the near future is unlikely, but Russian efforts to create strategic reserves and reposition forces on the battlefield could allow Russian forces to launch an offensive against the city in the summer,” the independent United States (U.S.) think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said.
The threat of a Russian offensive targeting Kharkiv or the city of Sumy, also in northeastern Ukraine and bordering Russia, is likely to force Ukraine to reallocate limited resources to building new fortifications around those areas, the ISW said.
On Tuesday, Zelenskyyi’s office said the Ukrainian leader “reviewed the process of building defense structures and fortifications near the border” with Russia during a visit to the Kharkiv region.
Describing this as a very important region, Zelenskyy added: “We must be ready. And the Russians must see that we are ready to defend ourselves.”
Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, said these fortifications include “Dragon’s Teeth” anti-tank defenses, new trenches and dugouts.
However, Russia can still launch an offensive along any part of the front line, ISW added, which “will continue to strain Ukraine’s already strained resources, regardless of the success of any operation in actually capturing a targeted city or settlement.”, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
