How Russia Opened a New Front

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On the morning of May 10th, Russian forces launched a ground assault against Ukraine in the northern Kharkiv region. I want to examine if this is a diversion tactic or are they planning to assault the city center? How will Ukraine respond? And What strategic reasons are driving the battle here for both sides? Im your average infantryman chris cappy Lets find out.

Behind me is a live conflict map that constantly updates the location of front line positions across the country. This icon indicates Russian troops are assaulting across roughly two dozen different towns on the border. So far Russia claims to have captured 5 villages within an area known as the contested grey zone although Ukraine contests that. This might seem like a surprise, but For the past 2 weeks we’ve actually seen reports that Russia was creating an operational significant northern grouping by moving between 35,000 and 50,000 of their troops to this region. On May 5th this report stated several units had been taken off the front lines in Zaporizhia and moved to form a new grouping near Kharkiv. The Ukrainian general staff had warned that Russia was massing troops along the northern border in recent weeks and could push for Kharkiv as an opener to a big summer offensive. Originally they anticipated the attack might even include an 2nd attempt at invading the city of Sumy as well. Much like during the first invasion attempt when we saw the Z symbol on many Russian vehicles we’re now seeing a new more complicated looking symbol associated specifically with the operational north grouping attacking near Kharkiv. Don’t ask me if it’s a celtic symbol, a letter of some unknown alphabet or a graphic design, I have no idea.

Many of these signs were first identified by a Ukrainian military observer Kostyantyn Mashovets who on May 5th reported that Russian forces were pretending to unload troops and equipment at railway stations in Kursk Oblast to come off the frontline for rest. They were trying to hide their troop movements because they then marched on foot to deployment points in Belgorod Oblast near the border. Russian troops moved to a staging area preparing for the assault while trying to avoid detection.

The city of Kharkiv itself is Ukraine’s second largest city, home to over 1.3 million people, and they have steadfastly resisted capture since the start of the invasion despite being located just 25 miles from the Russian border. Kharkiv has been rationing their electricity in the face of attacks on their energy infrastructure and they’ve reportedly been hit by glide bombs on a daily basis. There are some potential reasons for the strategic importance of this region to both sides. Pro-Ukranian all Russian forces launched several retaliatory cross border raids from the Kharkiv region into the Russian city of Belgorod in March 2024. That basically means Russian forces who are loyal to Ukraine launched actual ground assaults inside Russian territory near here. Then Russia claims Ukraine has been hitting Belgorod with artillery and drone strikes for months. Directly following this in March the Kremlin stated they would create what they called a quote unquote “sanitary zone” or a buffer zone inside Ukraine that was big enough to prevent these kind of strikes on Russian cities in the future. These lines of reasoning from Moscow might not be their true intentions, it could be disinformation designed to keep Russia’s true intentions hidden… but it’s important to note them. For example, Ukraine has already demonstrated its ability to hit deep inside Russian territory with domestically produced drones striking oil refineries all the way in Bashkortostan 1,300 miles from the front lines. And the United States just sent Ukraine a longer range ATACM missile with a range of 300 km. A ten kilometer buffer zone might not make a major difference as widespread tube artillery shelling of Belgorod was not occuring.

The Ukrainian military leadership now has a decision to make. How much reinforcements do they want to divert to Kharkiv. Ukraine has already devoted reserve forces to be engaged in the Donbass to stop Russia’s grinding advance after taking the city of Avdiivka in February. According to this ISW assessment This might be Russian planners' goal to force Ukraine to move manpower and materials off their lines in the Donbas to protect Kharkiv. The reason they make this assessment is because they believe 35,000 to 50,000 Russian troops would not be enough to take the city of Kharkiv which would require drives across open terrain on a scale Russia has not conducted since the start of the full scale invasion. Although if Russia chooses to reinforce this direction of attack further in the future that assessment could change.

#UKRAINE #WAR #NEWS