KYIV: Ukrainian units locked in street battles with the Kremlin’s forces in a key northeastern Ukraine town have halted the Russian advance, military officials in Kyiv claimed Thursday, though a senior Moscow official said the frontline push had enough resources to keep going.
Russian attempts to establish a foothold in the town of Vovchansk, which is among the largest towns in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region with a prewar population of 17,000, “have been foiled,” Ukraine’s general staff said in a midday report.
It was not possible to independently verify the claim.
Six people were injured Thursday in one Russian daylight attack on Vovchansk using cluster munitions, local officials said, as emergency workers and volunteers were rescuing people affected by shelling. Among the injured were two medics, he said.
Ukrainian authorities have evacuated some 8,000 civilians from the town. The Russian army’s usual tactic is to reduce towns and villages to ruins with aerial strikes before its units move in.
Vovchansk, located just 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Russian border, has been a hotspot in the fighting in recent days. Russia launched an offensive in the Kharkiv area late last week, significantly adding to the pressure on Ukraine’s outnumbered and outgunned forces which are waiting for delayed deliveries of crucial weapons and ammunition from Western partners.
Russia has also been testing defenses at other points along the roughly 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line snaking from north to south through eastern Ukraine. That line has barely changed over the past 18 months in what became a war of attrition. Recent Russian attacks have come in the eastern Donetsk region, as well as the Chernihiv and Sumy regions in the north and in the southern Zaporizhzhia region. The apparent aim is to stretch depleted Ukrainian resources and exploit weaknesses.
Ukraine has repeatedly tried to strike behind Russian lines, often using drones though Russia’s response to the new technology used in unmanned vehicles has improved in recent months.
Russian naval aircraft Thursday destroyed 11 Ukrainian sea drones heading toward annexed Crimea in the western Black Sea, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, according to state news agency TASS.
Kyiv made no comment.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky met with his top military commanders in Kharkiv on Thursday and said the region “is generally under control.” However, he acknowledged on social media that the situation is “extremely difficult” and said Ukraine was again strengthening its units in Kharkiv. Zelensky also met with wounded soldiers and handed out medals.
“We clearly see how the occupier is trying to distract our forces and make our combat work less concentrated,” he said in his nightly video address Wednesday.
Former Russian defense minister and now the head of the presidential Security Council Sergei Shoigu insisted Russian troops are pushing the offensive in many directions and that “it’s going quite well.”
“I hope we will keep advancing. We have certain reserves for the purpose, in personnel, equipment and munitions,” he said in televised remarks.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, calculated that Russian forces attacking in Kharkiv have advanced no more than 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the shared border.
It reckons Moscow’s main aim in Kharkiv is to create a “buffer zone” that will prevent Ukrainian cross-border strikes on Russia’s neighboring Belgorod region.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a two-day visit to Kyiv this week, sought to reassure Ukraine of continuing American support. He announced a $2 billion arms deal, with most of the money coming from a package approved last month.
Ukrainian officials say their needs are urgent, and Western partners have vowed to expedite deliveries of military hardware.
NATO Military Committee Chair Rob Bauer on Thursday urged senior officers from the 32-nation alliance to send more arms and ammunition to Ukraine, even if that means ignoring weapons stock guidelines.
“If faced with a choice between meeting the NATO capability targets or supporting Ukraine, you should support Ukraine,” he told a meeting of top defense brass in Brussels. “Stocks can and will be replenished. Lives lost are lost forever.”
Denmark is donating an extra 5.6 billion kroner ($814 million) to Ukraine, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen said Thursday, with half going to air defense systems.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to consolidate ties with China with an official visit to Beijing.
China has backed Russia diplomatically over its invasion of Ukraine and is now an important export market for Russian oil and gas. Moscow also has turned to Beijing for high-tech products.

BRATISLAVA: Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico remains in a serious condition and it is too soon to say whether he will recover, a deputy prime minister said on Thursday, a day after an assassination attempt that has sent shock waves across Europe.
The shooting was the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader for more than 20 years, and has drawn international condemnation. Political analysts and lawmakers say it has exposed an increasingly febrile and polarized political climate both in Slovakia and across Europe.
“Unfortunately, I cannot say yet that we are winning (the battle to save Fico) or that the prognosis is positive because the extent of the injuries caused by four gunshot wounds is so extensive that the body’s response will still be very difficult,” Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said.
Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok, speaking at the same news conference, said the shooter — whom police have charged with attempted murder — had acted alone and had previously taken part in anti-government protests.
“This is a lone wolf who had radicalized himself in the latest period after the presidential election (in April),” Sutaj Estok said.
The suspect listed government policies on Ukraine and its plans to reform the country’s public broadcaster and dismantle the special prosecutor’s office as reasons for the attack, the interior minister added.
Miriam Lapunikova, director of the F.D. Roosevelt University Hospital in Banska Bystrica where Fico is being treated, said the 59-year-old prime minister had undergone five hours of surgery with two teams to treat multiple gunshot wounds.
“At this point his condition is stabilized but is truly very serious, he will be in the intensive care unit,” she told reporters.
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova called for a calming of political tensions. Fico ally and President-elect Peter Pellegrini urged parties to suspend or tone down their campaigning for next month’s European Parliament elections.
“If there is anything the people of Slovakia urgently need today, it is at least a basic consensus and unity among Slovaks’ political representatives,” said Pellegrini, who won an April election for the mainly ceremonial post of president.

VETERAN LEADER
Fico has dominated Slovak politics for much of the past two decades, winning re-election last October for a fourth stint as premier.
He has fused left-leaning economic views with nationalism, tapping into widespread discontent over living standards, but has also proved a divisive figure. His critics say new reforms threaten the rule of law and media freedoms in Slovakia, a member state of the European Union and NATO.
Fico’s calls for ending sanctions on Russia and halting arms supplies to Ukraine have endeared him to Moscow, and President Vladimir Putin and other Russian politicians have been prominent among those condemning Wednesday’s assassination attempt.
Fico was shot while greeting supporters in the street after chairing a government meeting in the central town of Handlova.
Slovak news media reported that the 71-year-old gunman was a former security guard at a shopping mall, the author of three collections of poetry and a member of the Slovak Society of Writers. News outlet Aktuality.sk cited the suspect’s son as saying his father was the legal holder of a gun license.
There has been no official confirmation of the gunman’s identity and background.
The incident raised questions over Fico’s security arrangements, as the attacker managed to fire five shots at point blank range despite the prime minister being accompanied by several bodyguards.
In an undated video posted on Facebook, the alleged attacker was seen saying: “I do not agree with government policy” and criticizing government plans to revamp the public broadcaster.
Reuters verified the person in the video matched images of the man arrested after Fico’s shooting.
Fico and his government coalition allies have criticized sections of the media and the opposition, saying they had inflamed tensions in the central European state.
Slovakia’s biggest opposition party, the liberal, pro-Western Progressive Slovakia, was quick to condemn the shooting and called off a protest rally planned for Wednesday evening. It has also urged all politicians to avoid stoking tensions.