Ukraine said it was slowing Russia’s push near Kharkiv, where the president met with top commanders, but still faced pitched battles in that area and farther south.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine traveled to the embattled region of Kharkiv on Thursday, meeting with top commanders as their forces fought to slow a new offensive push in the northeast while facing fierce assaults elsewhere on the front line.
The Ukrainian military reported late on Wednesday that it had repelled four ground attacks in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces surged across the border last week and quickly captured a dozen or so villages and about 50 square miles of territory. Russia’s defense ministry did not report any new gains in the Kharkiv region over the past day.
“The situation in the Kharkiv region is generally under control,” President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on social media on Thursday after meeting in Kharkiv with Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces, and other top military commanders. He also visited wounded soldiers in a hospital in the city of Kharkiv.
But he acknowledged that the military challenge in the area “remains extremely difficult,” adding: “We are strengthening our units.”
Military analysts said that the threat to Ukraine was now just as acute, or more, in other regions farther south, as Russia seeks to take advantage of Ukrainian defenses that have been depleted because Kyiv has diverted troops to shore up Kharkiv.
In particular, Russian troops appeared to have launched new assaults on the southern village of Robotyne, one of the few places that Ukraine managed to recapture during its largely failed counteroffensive last summer.