A woman stands in the rubble of a house where Ukrainian servicemen were sheltering, which was destroyed by a Russian S-300 rocket strike, in Kupiansk, Ukraine, February 20, 2023.
AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File
Ukraine announced a mandatory evacuation of towns and villages under its control in the northeast.
It’s a sign Ukraine may be losing ground there, as Ukraine also reports shelling and a bomb attack.
But Ukraine says it’s stopping Russian advances in the area, as it continues its counteroffensive.
Ukrainian authorities announced the evacuation of multiple towns under its control in the northeastern Kharkiv region, in a sign that it could be losing territory to Russia.
The Kupiansk city military administration announced on Thursday a mandatory evacuation of towns and villages near the combat zone, citing shelling and the security situation in the area.
The evacuation applies to almost 12,000 civilians from 37 towns and villages in the Kupiansk district, the Associated Press reported.
This comes after Russia’s military said this week that it had made progress near Kupiansk.
Ukraine countered by saying its forces have “successfully repelled” Russia’s attacks there, the BBC reported.
But Ukraine has reported continual Russian attacks in the area.
The head of the Kharkiv regional state administration said on Telegram on Thursday that Russia damaged the Kupiansk city council building with a FAB-250 guided aerial bomb and shelled the city, and that two people were injured by shelling in the village of Kindrasivka.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister, Hanna Maliar, said on Wednesday that “the intensity of combat and enemy shelling is high” in the area.
Ukraine also said a woman in the district was killed by the shelling on Thursday, the BBC reported.
Russia took over the city of Kupiansk at the start of the war, but it was retaken by Ukraine six months later, during Ukraine’s September counteroffensive.
Local residents told The New York Times this week that they were afraid of another Russian occupation.
One resident, Liudmila Sezonova, told the outlet that “no one can survive a second occupation.”
Sezonova said that the last time Russia held the city she stayed at home for three months worried that she would be punished for being loyal to Ukraine.
She worries that she and others would not be able to protect themselves in the same way again.
The first time “you could keep your head down and be quiet,” she told the Times. “But now it is clear who is who and where their loyalties lie.”
Ukraine has evacuated civilians since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, seeking to move them further from conflict zones. It says it has done this to save lives and also make it easier for Ukraine’s soldiers to fight.
Ukraine is currently undertaking its long-awaited counteroffensive against Russia’s forces, focusing on the south and east rather than in the northeast, where Kupiansk is.
But it has so far made only marginal gains. Ukrainian soldiers and politicians say that the strong defenses built by Russian forces have slowed their progress.
The country has also pointed to delays regarding weapon deliveries from its allies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told CNN last month that he had wanted the counteroffensive to start “much earlier” but felt he had to wait for more weapons to arrive.
Overall, however, Ukraine has defended the pace of its counteroffensive, saying it has not yet deployed some of its best-trained units and is preserving troops and weapons as it tries to find weaknesses against an enemy that has significantly more resources.