Defense Ministry: Russian troops hit Ukrainian army positions in Kharkiv
Moscow says Russian troops have hit positions held by Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv region, hours after Ukrainians claimed to have made substantial progress there.
In a statement released on Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces were hitting Ukrainian army positions in the region with precision strikes, adding that the strikes were carried out by airborne troops, missiles and artillery.
President Volodymir Zelensky of Ukraine claimed on Saturday that his country’s army had reclaimed about 2,000 kilometers of territory from Russian forces in Kharkiv.
However, Russian Defense Ministry announced the same day that it was withdrawing troops from two areas of the northeastern region. the ministry added that its forces there were just going through a "redeployment" process.
“In order to achieve the goals of the special military operation, a decision was made to regroup troops in the areas of Balakleya and Izyum in order to build up efforts in the Donetsk direction,” the Russian military said in a statement.
Russia commenced the “special military operation” in the ex-Soviet republic on February 24, saying the operation was aimed at “demilitarizing” the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk self-proclaimed republics.
Back in 2014, the two republics broke away from Ukraine, refusing to recognize a Western-backed Ukrainian government there that had overthrown a democratically-elected Russia-friendly administration.
Thousands fleeing Kharkiv into Russia: Official
Separately on Sunday, a Russian official said thousands of people from Kharkiv had crossed the border and entered a southern region of Russia as the Ukrainian army claimed to have pushed back Moscow’s forces in the east.
“Over the past day, thousands of people have crossed the border. Most of them went to relatives in their own vehicles. Today, there are 1,342 people being housed in 27 temporary accommodation centers in the region,” said Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of the Belgorod region, in a video statement on social media.
Since the onset of the war, the United States and its European allies have supplied billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to Ukraine and imposed unprecedented sanctions on Moscow. Russia has repeatedly warned such a behavior will only prolong the war.
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