Good morning. In September 2022, Kharkiv province was the site of the greatest Ukrainian victory of the war so far: the lightning counteroffensive that liberated at least 12,000 square kilometres from Russian control, pushed Moscow’s artillery out of range of Kharkiv city and provided real hope that Vladimir Putin could not just be slowed down, but defeated.
Over the past few days, Kharkiv has been the location of a very different shift. This time, it is the Russians who have made larger daily advances than at almost any other point in the war, and are now moving further forwards. Civilians who had come home are fleeing once more in their thousands, and even Kyiv admits that the situation is “difficult”. Further attacks could draw sparse Ukrainian resources from along the frontline, deal a heavy blow to Ukrainian morale and redraw the map before the resources belatedly provided by the US last month are in place to do anything about it.
As US secretary of state Anthony Blinken arrives in Kyiv for a speech today, US officials are working to speed up the delivery of that aid. The question is how far the Russians are able to go in the meantime. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Guardian foreign correspondent Luke Harding about the prospects of a further advance, why Putin is focusing on Kharkiv, and what it tells us about the wider state of the war. Here are the headlines.
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Russian operations around Kharkiv (above) have been gradually intensifying for more than a month, with attacks on the regional capital’s power stations and residential areas designed to take advantage of the lack of air defences on the Ukrainian side.
At dawn on Friday, reports began to emerge of fighting in border villages and an attempt to break through the Ukrainian line. By Saturday, Moscow claimed to have captured five villages; on Sunday, amid claims of further advances, Ukraine’s top military commander Oleksandr Syrskyi denied there had been any significant breakthrough – but acknowledged “fighting fierce defensive battles” and said “the situation is difficult”. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian commander in the region has been dismissed and replaced.
This open-source map shows the direction of the Russian attacks. Last night, Russian advances were reported to have slowed down amid mass casualties – but there were reports of fierce fighting on the outskirts of the town of Vovchansk and Russian troops closing on the town of Lyptsi, within striking distance of Kharkiv city itself.
Why is Russia attacking in Kharkiv?
There are two obvious explanations – one about the value of the territory itself, the other about the wider impact on the war. In March, Vladimir Putin said that a “buffer zone” in Ukrainian territory was needed to protect Russia from shelling and cross-border incursions; since then, Kharkiv, which has a long border with Russia to the north-east, has come under attack.
“There is obviously a desire to take control of Kharkiv,” Luke Harding said. He reported from the region in the aftermath of the 2022 counteroffensive: “You would see on bus shelters and so on the initials KPR scrawled – Kharkiv’s People’s Republic.” That mirrors the unrecognised Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, vessels for Russian control designed to lend a veneer of democratic legitimacy.
“If the Russians have some success there now, they will try to revive that idea. The Russians are hated and despised there for the most part – and the people who supported it already left for Russia when the counteroffensive happened. But military facts can become political reality.”
The broader, and perhaps more immediately consequential, aspect of the attack is the additional pressure on Ukraine’s strained military resources. “To defend against this surge, Ukraine is having to send reinforcements to the north-east,” Luke said. “Putin’s short-term strategic objective is to reach the administrative borders of Donetsk province. If that happens, it would be an enormous moment, and a triumph for Putin.”
Luke was reporting from Donetsk last week, and in a piece from the frontline city of Kostiantynivka published yesterday described Russia’s appetite for “huge losses of tanks and men to capture tiny settlements, deploying infantry in what are known as bloody ‘meat assaults’.” “They are pushing, pushing, pushing there,” he said. Forcing Ukraine to defend elsewhere is an obvious boost for Russia on the eastern front as well.
What could the consequences of the offensive be on the region?
If Russia secures positions in Vovchansk (above) and Lyptsi, where residents have already fled in evacuation vans after coming under sustained artillery and drone attack, it will have a solid platform for artillery attacks on the city of Kharkiv, which was once a major industrial hub and home to 1.4 million people. Before the 2022 counteroffensive, “there were endless artillery attacks there”, Luke said. “Swathes of the north-east of the city were left in ruins – you can still see the ghostly tower blocks. The people who left and came back will be forced to leave again.”
Actually taking control of the city appears very difficult, he added. “But there is a secondary objective of making life there impossible. There is a clear Russian military doctrine of terror: it has frequently been hard to tell what the possible military targets of shells that have hit parks, schools, restaurants were supposed to be. If Kharkiv comes under that kind of attack again, there is now a question about whether it can be a viable city in the future.”
How might the Kharkiv operation affect morale?
Against a backdrop of growing pessimism that Ukraine can win the war, it isn’t hard to see why a major defeat in a region synonymous with Kyiv’s most remarkable victory would have an especially bad effect on the morale of troops and the wider population.
“It’s not that Ukrainians want to give up,” Luke said. “They know they can’t give up. But this would certainly be another blow, and add to a sense that things are unravelling.”
At the same time, he added, “the closer you get to the frontline, the more morale seems to be OK. Yes, they’re tired, and yes, they want the war to end – but they’ve become pretty good at killing Russians. The problem is that Russia is using its size and depth to grind out victories village by village, town by shattered town. And Ukraine, for all of its valour, can stop them a bit – but it can’t stop them everywhere.”
The US approval of a $61bn aid package three weeks ago has provided a vital fillip – and US secretary of state Anthony Blinken arrived in Kyiv today to underscore that the support is being brought in as quickly as possible. “The Ukrainians do feel that with this and further assistance, they can hold the line,” Luke said.
But it will be some time until the hardware paid for by the US will be operational, he added. “Not much has arrived so far in significant quantities. In the east last week the mortars, the artillery, the F16 jets were not there. And the Russians know they have a window of two or three months to try to take as much territory as they can.”
Can Ukraine hold the Russians off?
Russia’s progress in Kharkiv so far – overrunning a so-called “grey zone” of limited strategic value because of its unfavourable terrain – does not amount to victory. “What they’ve done is take the low-hanging fruit,” Luke said. “Now they are using the classic encirclement tactics that are taught in Russian military school – advancing around targets like Vovchansk to cut them off, and then swallow them up.”
The fall of Vovchansk looks “pretty certain”, he added. “The advantage they have is that Russia is just next door, with aviation, artillery and the strategic resource of the city of Belgorod.” He also noted that because of a US aversion to letting its equipment be used to attack targets within Russia, “they’ve been able to amass troops and equipment right next to the border without being hit by weapons like Himars rockets” – satellite-guided US systems that have been highly effective in the past.
If Russia does succeed in Kharkiv, Vladimir Putin will still be an impossibly long way from his prewar ambition of replacing the Ukrainian government and subjugating the country. “There is no path to clearcut victory,” Luke said. “The problem is that the Russian alternative to not taking control of the country is destroying everything it can.”
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