Russian nationalists have demanded a major new offensive near Kharkiv in a bid to stop further Ukrainian strikes on Belgorod.

Dozens have been killed and hundreds injured in strikes on the city, which is just 20 miles from Ukraine’s north-eastern border, in recent weeks.

Now calls have been made for the Russian army to advance along hundreds of miles of front line to establish a nine-mile-deep “buffer zone” that would push Ukrainian missile launchers out of range of the city.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US-based think tank, said the proposed offensive contradicted “the Russian military’s likely inability to conduct an operation to seize significant territory in Kharkiv Oblast in the near term”.

“A Russian incursion 15 kilometres in depth and several hundred kilometres in width would be a massive operational undertaking that would require a grouping of forces far larger and significantly better resourced than what Russian forces currently have concentrated along the entire international border with Ukraine, least of all in Belgorod Oblast,” it said.

Russia has not won any major military advance since May last year, when Wagner mercenaries spearheaded the taking of Bakhmut after a brutal months-long battle for the city.

The calls for a new offensive near Kharkiv came after Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesperson, said on Tuesday that Vladimir Putin’s government would do “everything” to stop increasingly frequent Ukrainian strikes on Belgorod.

The most deadly attack came on December 30, when 25 people were killed and more than 100 were injured.

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