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Ukraine Attacks Russia Along Northern Front

Sweeping south from positions in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, Ukrainian forces have made their largest gains since routing Russia from Kyiv in April.

Ukrainian fighters in Kharkiv on Friday. President Volodymyr Zelensky said his military had captured large chunks of occupied territory in the north.
Juan Barreto/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian forces have scored the most significant battlefield gains since they routed Russia from the area around Kyiv in April by reclaiming territory in the northeast, according to Ukrainian officials, Western analysts and battlefield imagery.

In his overnight address to the nation Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian military had captured scores of villages and large chunks of Russian-occupied territory across Ukraine since the offensive began. “In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of September,” he said.

On Friday the Ukrainian military appeared to be moving rapidly to cut off the city of Izium, a critical logistical hub for Russian military operations.
The exact positions of Ukrainian forces in the area around Izium could not be independently established. But satellite data, independent military analysts and photos and videos of Ukrainian forces indicated that they had moved quickly toward Kupiansk, another logistical hub just north of Izium.

The new offensive in the north appears to have caught the Russian forces off guard. On Friday, its Defense Ministry said on Telegram that it was moving troops to reinforce the Kharkiv region, without specifying their numbers or specific locations.

Ukraine’s advances in the northeast sent a shock wave through Kremlin-friendly military bloggers, pro-war cheerleaders who typically call for more aggressive action.

Maps: Tracking the Russian invasion of the Ukraine

“We need to be honest, the Ukrainian command has outplayed us here,” said Yury Podolyaka, a Ukrainian pro-Kremlin blogger with more than 2.2 million followers on Telegram. He warned that if the Russian forces failed to “stop the Ukrainian breakthrough” in the coming days “this will be the most serious combat defeat” for Moscow.

Ukrainian and Western officials cautioned that the offensive operations were in their early days, that the situation was fluid and that the gains were far from secure. Not all of the claims of advances by Ukraine could be independently verified, and much about the state of the fighting in both the east and the south of Ukraine is shrouded in uncertainty as the government in Kyiv enforces a media blackout, restricting journalists’ access to the front.

For months, Ukraine’s leaders declared loudly and often their intention to launch a counteroffensive in the south, around the port city of Kherson. And they proceeded to batter Russian supply lines, ammunition depots and command centers in the region with precision rockets, while massing troops and orchestrating covert attacks on military bases and Russian collaborators far behind enemy lines.

Ukrainian soldiers near the Kherson front this week. Ukraine’s leaders had long declared their intentions to retake Kherson, but said little about the north. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
But they said virtually nothing about the northeast, until this week.

Accounts from witnesses, the local Ukrainian authorities, Russian proxy officials, geolocated video on social media and satellite footage offered a window into the Ukrainian campaign.

On Thursday, Ukrainian officials said their troops had pushed through the town of Balakliya, less than 30 miles from the city of Izium, which lies close to the Donbas, the contested area of eastern Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has vowed to seize. President Zelensky released video of soldiers raising Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag above the town’s administrative building, and other officials posted videos, not all immediately authenticated, of locals coming out to greet the soldiers.

Ukrainian soldiers on Friday posted photos that purported to be in the vicinity of Kupiansk, which has served as the capital of the Russian occupation in the region. The Kremlin-installed head of the city administration, Vitaly Ganchev, urged women and children to evacuate as Ukrainian forces approached.

Mr. Ganchev said the city is under “constant rocket attacks from the armed forces of Ukraine,” according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

In response to the growing threats in the south, the Russian military redeployed thousands of troops from the Donbas, apparently thinning their defenses in the north and providing an opening for the Ukrainians.

Russia’s seeming inability to secure a key flank near Izium also highlighted its challenge in defending occupied territory along front lines that stretch 1,500 miles from northeastern Ukraine to the Black Sea coast in the south. And the battlefield setbacks seemed to underscore the manpower issues plaguing the Russian army, which the United States estimates has suffered at least 80,000 wounded and killed since the invasion began in late February.

A Russian strike in the Kherson region this month.
Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

On Friday, some of Russia’s military bloggers voiced dismay over the inability of Russian commanders to prepare stout defenses. Others have demanded an explanation from the Russian military command or other authorities.

Maksim Fomin called on law enforcement to figure out why Russian forces were unprepared for the Ukrainian offensive. “The situation is very diffilcult,” he said. “Let’s exhale and say that we have been defeated.”

Yevgeny Poddubny, a Russian state TV reporter, posted a video of Russian transport helicopters that he said were transferring Russian troops to the Kupiansk and Izium areas, citing Russian defense officials.

Some of the pro-Kremlin bloggers have warned that the loss of large swaths of occupied lands in Ukraine would undermine the “Russia is here forever” message that the occupying authorities have been preaching in order to sway locals to support them.

Occupation forces outside Donetsk this month.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
While the Ukrainian gains in the north were capturing most of the attention Friday, the southern counteroffensive also made gains, with Ukraine’s Security Service releasing photos of what it said was the city of Vysokopillia, in the Kherson region. That claim could not be independently verified.
Last week, Ukrainian forces reported that they had broken through the first line of Russian defenses in multiple locations in the Kherson region, where they remain engaged in fierce battles to drive the Russians back from well-fortified positions.

Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said the campaign in the south did not appear to be a diversion to draw Russian forces.

“These appear to be interrelated offensives,” he said on Twitter on Thursday. “Kherson likely intended as a more deliberate, sequenced advance. Kharkiv to take advantage of favorable conditions.”
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that Ukraine has made tangible gains in recent days, but he sought to temper expectations for what will probably continue to prove a bloody campaign.

“There is fighting — both offense and defense — all the way from Kharkiv all the way down to Kherson,” he said at a news conference in Germany.
Still, General Milley said the Ukrainians were making efficient use of newly acquired weapons systems to set the stage for their offensive. The American-made HIMARS missile system, he said, has been used to strike more than 400 targets. And it is just one of a number of advanced weapons systems now being deployed by the Ukrainians.
But he emphasized that Russia, although its supply lines were strained and its manpower troubles far from resolved, retained significant advantages in the war.

“The war is not over,” he said. “Russia’s a big country. They have very serious ambitions with respect to Ukraine.”

Authors: Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Marco Hernandez from New York. Anna Lukinova contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Alan Yuhas from New York.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/world/aeurope/ukraine-russia-kharkiv.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Published on: 9 September 2022

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This is what one town in Ukraine looks like after Russian troops withdrew:

By patrick scheidegger artwork

A monument for Taras Shevchenko is symbolically protected by bandages in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv.

In the devastated town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, Natasha Romanenko has pushed paper into the bullet holes peppered across her windows.

It’s to keep the cold out, she tells us.

“You can see, there are holes where they were shooting directly in our window when we were hiding there,” she says, speaking through NPR’s interpreter.

When Russian forces invaded and occupied the town, the damage was devastating. Ukrainian officials say Russia deliberately bombed civilian areas and that hundreds are still missing more than a week after the invading forces withdrew. Now, crews are sifting through the wreckage to see what — and who — survived.

We start to see signs of the destruction on the drive from Kyiv into Borodyanka. What should be a quick trip now takes hours as destroyed bridges mean more cars crowd onto the few reliable routes, and the military checkpoints create long lines on narrow roads.

A destroyed building in the town of Borodyanka.

We pass through the village of Dmitriovka and see a burned-out car near homes reduced to rubble. A little farther on, there is a flattened tank.

Then, another destroyed car that has the word “children” spray-painted in Russian along the side door.

We arrive on Borodyanka’s main street — Central Street — with a humanitarian convoy that immediately begins handing out food and water.

It’s here that we meet Natasha. She and her family spent a month hiding in a cramped, dark root cellar.

“What did we eat? Mostly potatoes,” she says. “I had some spare oil, and I have a cow, so I had milk. And I went to my neighbor, I gave her some milk. She gave me some other things, some cheese. So this is how we survived. Our cow saved us.”

Natasha takes us to the cellar, which is mostly filled with crates of potatoes. She explains that at night, they would lay a carpet over the crates and try to sleep on top of that, keeping warm under all the blankets they had.

In the final days of the occupation, Natasha says, a Russian soldier confronted her. She had ventured out to milk her cow, and he thought she was scouting Russian troop locations. She says he took her out to the middle of the road and pointed a gun to her head.

Natasha Romanenko and her family spent a month hiding from Russian forces in Borodyanka.

“He was threatening me,” she says. “And what did I say to him? I said I just wish one thing: that he would see my face for the rest of his days, so he would never forget what he’s done here.”

The soldier spoke to someone else on his radio. Then, Natasha says, he let her go.

As the aid workers move through the main street, we break from the group, and the scale of the destruction starts to sink in. It’s utter devastation everywhere you look.

There’s an apartment building blackened from flames, with the middle collapsed from the bombing. The windows in all the storefronts have shattered and roofs have collapsed. There are burned vehicles in the streets, and most of the power lines are down and frayed on the ground.

Across from the destroyed apartment building, there’s a small park with a monument in the middle. On top sits a giant bust of Taras Shevchenko, the famous Ukrainian poet. Bullet holes pierce his forehead.

The tall pillar that the bust rests on is cracked and crumbling from all the shrapnel. Three policemen are holding a ladder while another man stands nearby, ready to climb to the top.

Apartment complexes burned and blackened by flames from bombing in Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv

Yaroslav Halubchik is an artist from Kyiv and has come here to help create an ad hoc art project — an instant memorial of sorts.

“We’re calling it ‘The Curing of Shevchenko’ or ‘The Healing of Shevchenko,’ ” he says.

Yaroslav steps up the ladder and starts to wrap a big gauze bandage around the bust’s giant head. As he does that, a man in a Ukrainian military uniform comes up and asks him what he’s doing.

Yaroslav explains that it’s performance art, and the soldier seems satisfied. It turns out, he was worried that they were repairing it.

“In this case, it is vital that we keep this monument as it is right now, it shouldn’t be touched,” the soldier says. He adds that it’s especially important because of who Shevchenko was.

“This is really important, because we all know that Shevchenko and other Ukrainian poets were always enemies of Russia,” he explains. “I really hope that people will rebuild everything here as it was, but we should keep this as it is now.”

We ask his name. He’s Yevhen Nyshchuk — the former Ukrainian minister of culture. He’s in the military now and based nearby.

A monument at the entrance of the town of Borodyanka.

We keep making our way down the main street. Building after building has collapsed from the bombardment of tank and rocket fire.

In the nearby town of Bucha, bodies were found in the street. Here, with so many collapsed structures, the worry is that bodies are still trapped underneath.

Several cranes carefully pick up debris, as recovery teams look for remains. There’s a playground in front of one of the buildings and a woman is sitting there on a bench next to a slide, watching the recovery work.

Her name is Ludmila Boiko.

“My sister and her son lived here. This is what’s left of them,” she says, pointing to a pile of old notebooks. “His mother kept his old notebooks from school.”

Ludmila found them scattered around the debris of the apartment building. That and some pictures, she says, are the only things she’s found.

Ludmila’s sister Olyna Vahnenko was 56. Her nephew, Yuri, was 24. He had just graduated from college.

Ludmila Boiko near a collapsed building in Borodyanka.

They’d left their apartment and sought shelter. But on March 1, during a break in the shelling and bombing, Olyna and Yuri went back. Ludmila says they talked on the phone, and Olyna said they had been able to shower and eat some food.

An hour later, Russian forces destroyed the building.

“Our friends were trying to help us, but for four days, it was a huge fire here,” Ludmila says. “And so first they were trying to fight the fire. They didn’t have a chance to do excavations right away.”

When the fire stopped, people started trying to look for survivors. Then shelling began again, and they had to flee.

After that, she says Russian forces were posted here, and nobody could get near the building.

Searching couldn’t resume until a month after the attack. So Ludmila sat, and waited.

“I just want to see how they discover all the bodies that they assume should be there, and then probably I would like to do something like with DNA testing because I want to know for sure what happened,” she says.

“I was so close with them that I don’t even know how I should live now. How should I live in this place?”

Rescuers search a collapsed building in Borodyanka.

The crane continues to slowly remove rubble from a collapsed building.

Soon, workers discover a woman’s body. Ludmila climbs up the pile of rubble to look.

The body is removed, covered and placed next to three others found earlier that day.

Ludmila goes back to the playground and sits down, continuing her vigil.