Ukraine, May  11, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Russia on Saturday said it had captured
five villages in Ukraine's northeastern Kharkiv region during a surprise ground
offensive that prompted mass evacuations, as President Volodymyr Zelensky made
an urgent call for military aid.

Moscow's defence ministry said its troops had "liberated" five villages in
Ukraine's Kharkiv region near the Russian border -- Borysivka, Ogirtseve,
Pletenivka, Pylna and Strilecha -- as well as taking one village in the Donetsk
region.

Ukraine's defence ministry said Friday Russia had launched a surprise
attack on the Kharkiv region, making small advances into a border zone from
where it had been pushed back nearly two years ago.

"Fighting for villages... continues in the border area," Ukrainian military
spokesman Nazar Voloshyn said on national television on Saturday.

There was "heavy fighting" in the border area and 1,775 people have been
evacuated, Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on social media.

Two men aged 50 and 48 were killed and two wounded by guided aerial bomb
attacks on the town of Vovchansk close to the border, Synegubov said later. He
posted video from Vovchansk showing windows blown out of a multi-storey block
of flats and shattered houses on fire.

The governor insisted there was "no threat of a ground operation" for the
city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest.

Groups of people fleeing the border area were arriving in vans and cars
loaded with bags at a reception centre for evacuees near Kharkiv, AFP
journalists saw.

- 'Impossible to live there' -

Evacuees -- many of them elderly -- received food and medical assistance
and could sleep in bunk beds.

One 61-year-old woman, Lyubov Nikolaieva, told AFP she had fled the border
village of Lyptsi along with her 81-year-old mother.

"It's impossible to live there," said Nikolaieva, adding that her family
"stayed there until the last moment" without gas or electricity.

"There is constant incoming fire: those guided aerial bombs and mortar
shells whistling overhead. It became very scary," she said.

An aid worker helping evacuate residents, Dmytro Tkachenko, 37, told AFP:
"There is a really hard, difficult situation in the directions of Vovchansk and
Lyptsi.

"There is some (troop) movement and at the moment, it really complicates
the evacuation from these areas, because it's really dangerous."

- 'Saves lives' -

The Kharkiv region has been mostly under Ukrainian control since September
2022.

Zelensky said Saturday troops must "return the initiative to Ukraine" and
urged Kyiv's allies to speed up arms deliveries.

"Every air-defence system, every anti-missile system is literally what
saves lives," Zelensky said.

"It is important that our partners support our soldiers and Ukrainian
resilience with timely deliveries -- really timely ones," he added.

"The package that really helps is the weapons brought to Ukraine, not just
the announced ones."

Ukrainian forces have multiplied attacks inside Russia and Russia-held
areas of Ukraine, particularly on energy infrastructure.

Also Saturday, a missile strike killed three people when it hit a
restaurant called Paradise in the Russian-held city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.

The attack using US HIMARS precision rocket launchers killed two diners and
a restaurant worker and wounded nine, officials from the Russian-backed
administration said.

- 'Not a big offensive' -

Officials in Kyiv had warned for weeks that Moscow might try to attack its
northeastern border regions, pressing its advantage as Ukraine struggles with
delays in Western aid and manpower shortages.

Ukraine's military said it had deployed reserve units "to strengthen the
defence in these areas of the front".

Military expert Olivier Kempf told AFP Saturday that Russia's ground
operation was most likely aimed at creating a buffer zone near its Belgorod
region, recently raided by pro-Ukrainian units, or diverting Ukraine's
resources from the Donetsk region.

"Twenty-four hours after the launch of the operations, it doesn't look like
a big offensive," said the associate fellow at the Foundation for Strategic
Research, a French think tank.

Washington announced a new $400 million military aid package for Kyiv hours
after the offensive began, and said it was confident Ukraine could repel any
fresh Russian campaign.