https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72p0xx410xo
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The Russians simply walked in, Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv tell BBC
32 minutes ago
Jonathan Beale,Defence correspondent
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Denys Yaroslavskyi is angry.
As the Commander of a Ukrainian Special Reconnaissance Unit, he fought in Ukraine’s surprise offensive in Kharkiv in the autumn of 2022, which pushed back an initial Russian invasion all the way back to the border.
But now Denys and his men are facing the prospect of doing the same all over again.
Russian forces have, in recent days, made small but significant gains right along the border in the Kharkiv region.
Their advances are only a few miles deep but have swallowed up around 100km (62 miles) of Ukrainian territory. In the more heavily defended east of Ukraine, it’s taken Russia months to achieve the same.
Denys wants to know what happened to Ukraine’s defences.
“There was no first line of defence. We saw it. The Russians just walked in. They just walked in, without any mined fields” he says.
He shows me video from a drone feed taken a few days ago of small columns of Russian troops simply walking across the border, unopposed.
He says officials had claimed that defences were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defences simply weren’t there. “Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal”.
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Opening a new front here in the north is stretching Ukraine’s limited resources. The US delay in approving more military support has starved Ukrainian troops of ammunition.
On average, Ukraine has only been able to fire one artillery round to Russia’s 10. That is now slowly being addressed, with the US support now coming.
But the Kharkiv offensive also highlights problems Ukraine itself has been too slow to address – mobilising enough troops and building adequate defence lines. Re-enforcements being sent to Kharkiv have had to be pulled from other parts of the front and limited reserves.
Ukrainian officials still insist Kharkiv city is not under threat of a ground invasion. But the further the Russian’s advance, the more likely that it will come within range of Russian artillery.
Back in a park in Kharkiv, Denys says he believes Russian forces will try to focus on the East and to capture the entire Donbas. But he says Russia is also trying to exploit Ukrainian weaknesses right across the 1,000km front. In Kharkiv they’ve found one.
“Of course I’m angry,” Denys says. “When we were fighting back for this territory in 2022, we lost thousands of people. We risked our lives.
"And now because someone didn’t build fortifications, we’re losing people again.”