The Ukraine package contains urgently needed capabilities including ammunition for HIMARS
The United States announced a new $275 million package of weapons and equipment for Ukraine on Friday to help it repel Russia’s operation near Kharkiv, the State Department said.
According to the department, the package includes capabilities that are urgently needed, such as precision aerial munitions, missiles, anti-armor systems, 155mm and 105mm artillery rounds, and HIMARS ammunition.
“Assistance from previous packages has already made it to the front lines, and we will move this new assistance as quickly as possible so the Ukrainian military can use it to defend their territory and protect the Ukrainian people,” the statement said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he visited Kharkiv earlier in the day and spoke with military leaders, heads of special services, and regional and local administrations in his nightly video message on Friday.
Zelenskyy reported that border territories in Kharkiv’s northern regions, which Russian troops had targeted earlier this month, were now under battle control of Ukrainian forces.
Viktor Vodolatsky, a deputy to the Russian State Duma, the country’s lower house of parliament, had different remarks from him. Five kilometers inside the Ukrainian border, Vodolatsky was quoted by the Tass news agency as saying that Russian soldiers possessed control over more than half of the town of Vovchansk.
Vodolatsky was quoted as saying that once Vovchansk was secured, Russian forces would target three cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk.
Reuters was unable to independently verify battlefield accounts from either side.
Russia struck trains and tracks and damaged buildings in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region as part of a coordinated counteroffensive against eastern Ukraine.
Ukraine’s national railway operator, Ukrzaliznytsia, said there were no injuries reported from the Russian attacks on the railway, but local officials said Friday that they were evacuating children from the area of Kharkiv, which is has been barraged by Russian forces.
Ukrainian officials announced on Friday the mandatory evacuation over the next 60 days of 123 orphans and children living without their parents in the area.
Authorities have evacuated more than 11,000 people from the Kharkiv region since Russia mounted an offensive there on May 10, regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
Russia’s offensive aims to test Ukrainian defenses in the Kharkiv region and further south in the Donetsk region while also launching incursions in the northern Sumy and Chernihiv regions.
Russia’s new advances are stretching Ukraine’s depleted military thin.
Destroying the train network adds more strain on the already outmanned and outgunned Ukrainian army after more than two years of warfare in the area.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he wants to create a “buffer zone” in the Kharkiv region to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.
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