Ukrainian authorities have ordered the evacuation of 37 towns due to the heavy fighting in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kupyansk. In view of the “difficult security situation and the increasing bombing”, people should go to “a safer place”, the city administration said on Thursday in the online service Telegram. According to the list published by the city’s military administration on Thursday, these are smaller villages and parts of Kupyansk on the east bank of the Oskil River.
More than 11,000 people, including 600 children, were affected by the evacuations, wrote the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Synyehubov. According to the Kupyansk city administration, it is mainly women with children, the elderly, the sick and residents with restricted mobility who should leave the area. The regional capital Kharkiv, around 100 kilometers to the west, was mentioned as a possible contact point. The evacuation began on Wednesday, said the head of Kupyansk’s military administration, Andriy Besedin.
Is Moscow aiming for new conquests in the Kharkiv region?
Ukraine liberated the city of Kupyansk in the Kharkov region from Russian occupation last year. The city and the surrounding area were then repeatedly the target of Russian shelling. On Thursday night, a Fab-25 aerial bomb is said to have damaged the city administration building, as Synyehubov reported on his Telegram channel. In addition, two civilians are said to have been injured by Russian fire that same night in the village of Kindrashivka, just a few kilometers away. The village is now also on the list of towns to be evacuated.
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The territory attacked there is outside the four areas illegally annexed by Russia. According to observers, the attacks there could serve to relieve Russian troops in the south and south-east, where Ukrainian troops have been concentrating their counter-offensive for two months. However, Moscow could also strive for new conquests in the Kharkiv region in order to have them in its hands as a bargaining chip in the event of a diplomatic solution to the war.
Moscow said on Thursday that Russian troops had expanded their positions on the front line around Kupyansk. In the course of the operations, the “assault squads of the western battle group improved their positions along the front section of the front,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Russian attacks were also reported far away from the front in western Ukraine. According to the local authorities, an oil depot near Dubno in the Rivne region was destroyed by a Russian drone attack during the night.
According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Russia used ten Iranian-made kamikaze drones against the neighboring country during the night. Seven of them were shot down by the air defenses. Information from the war zone often cannot be checked directly independently.
In its war of aggression, which has been going on for more than 17 months, Russia has repeatedly bombarded Ukraine with cruise missiles, rockets and drones. Thanks to international help, the air defenses of the capital Kiev are now considered to be well protected. In other cities and at the front, repelling Russian air attacks is more difficult.