For more than eight days, the Ukrainian army has been trying to contain the Russian offensive on the Kharkiv region bordering Russia while police and volunteers have been evacuating civilians from these heavily bombarded areas in northeastern Ukraine.
On Saturday, May 18, eight days after the start of this new assault, the region's governor, Oleg Sinegubov, declared that almost 10,000 people had been evacuated from the targeted villages. This figure does not take into account the even larger number of people who left their homes under their own steam.
This new ground operation, which initially caught the Ukrainian armed forces off guard on Friday, May 11, despite repeated warnings over several weeks, comes at an opportune moment for the Kremlin. Kyiv's troops, who have shifted to defensive positions along the immense front line that crosses the country from east to south, are experiencing a shortage of soldiers and ammunition due to delays in Western supplies.
The Ukrainian authorities announced that they were sending reinforcements to contain the Russian army which managed to break through defenses up to 10 kilometers deep in this sector. The situation has since improved, according to the president, Volodymyr Zelensky, quoted by Agence France-Presse on Saturday. However, the leader said he feared enemy forces would launch a wider offensive to seize Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, just 30 kilometers from Russia.
The previous day, his counterpart in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, had declared that he had no intention of attacking the city "for the time being," claiming that this new attack was mainly aimed at creating a buffer zone to prevent Ukrainian bombardments on Russian border territories.
The Ukrainian inhabitants of villages in the eastern Kharkiv region have no choice but to flee their homes which have been relentlessly bombed for over a week. Those without cars are rescued by police officers or volunteers and then taken to the big city which is regularly targeted by drones, missiles and guided aerial bombs.
On May 14, outside a reception center on the outskirts of Kharkiv, hundreds of men, women and children registered with the authorities in order to receive financial aid and benefit from social housing in the region.
Lucia Hryniova, in her 70s, had just arrived from Vovchansk, a town five kilometers from Russia with a pre-war population of 17,400. "It burned, it burned, it burned," she exclaimed, gesturing to imaginary houses as she recounted the last moments she spent in her hometown before being evacuated. "For three days, I didn't go out and I didn't eat," said the elderly woman who had taken refuge in a shelter with neighbors until she left amid the bombs. "I didn't cry the whole time," she said with stifled sobs, "but now I can't hold it in any longer. We should have left earlier."
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