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Ukraine’s forces still hold some 60 percent of a key city in the province of Kharkiv after bloody urban combat with Russian troops, Ukrainian authorities said Monday.
Soldiers battled from house to house and in the streets as the Russian army sought to shore up its position in the northern region and stretch Ukrainian lines in the south and east.
“The enemy keeps trying, especially inside Vovchansk, to push the Ukrainian Armed Forces out of the town,” Deputy Governor Roman Semenukha said on Ukrainian television May 20.
Syniehubov added that the Russian offensive, which began on May 15, had largely destroyed the town.
Russian forces captured multiple cities in the Kharkiv oblast, but not the regional capital itself, when their invasion began in early 2022, before Ukraine soldiers repelled them in May 2023.
Moscow’s bid to retake the province comes as opinion in the West concerning how to support Kyiv grows more divided and Ukraine’s military effort falters amid troop shortages and a lack of ammunition.
At least 1,500 Russian troops have been killed since entering Kharkiv region, according to the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
The battle lines in Vovchansk are now the two banks of the Vovcha River that bisects the town, the region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, told Reuters.
On Monday Russia also struck a lakeside resort in the region, killing at least 11 and wounding many more, according to Ukrainian prosecutors.
