Vovchansk: glide bombs, missiles and drones. Massive Russian airstrikes around Kharkiv are underway, with a literal rain of missiles raining down on Ukrainian troops, writes Askold Krushelnycky, a journalist for The Independent and BBC commentator who has been on the ground in Ukraine near the Kharkiv combat zone for several days, in PostPravda.info. Askold spoke with one of the soldiers who had been redeployed near Vovchansk from another part of the front to help stop a strong Russian attack.
Written and photographed by Askold Krushelnycky
Editorial and translation: Piotr Kaszuwara
- – The Russians are dumping everything they have on us. The fighting is close to their border, so it’s easy for them to bring in new people, supplies, and move armored vehicles. On top of that, they are shelling us from their side of the border, and it’s easier for them to operate with helicopters and planes – is told by an “American,” a soldier who fought at Vovchansk, interviewed by the Askold Krushelnycky.
- Kiev estimates that last week alone, the Russians dropped more than 200 glide bombs near Vovchansk, the so-called “Kiev bomb”. KABs.
- Decisions by Western politicians mean that supplied equipment cannot be used against targets inside Russia. And it is, after all, where all of Moscow’s arsenal stands, which Putin is using to terrorize Kharkiv once again.
Battle for Kharkov: artillery can’t reach here
Rockets, glide bombs – with attached wings or built-in GPS – and on top of that, massive drone attacks. Russia has been on an open offensive northeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, for more than a dozen days. Aerial bombardments are supported by ground attacks. Several thousand Moscow soldiers crossed the Ukrainian border and tried to push toward Kharkov itself. The most fierce fighting was concentrated in the area near the city of Vovchansk. It is located very close to the border and about 60 kilometers from Kharkov. Russian forces overcame weak Ukrainian fortifications, penetrating several kilometers of terrain in depth and capturing two bridgeheads with a total area of about 100 square kilometers.
The Russians seized several villages before late Ukrainian reinforcements halted the advance. – During our visit, a vehicle of the Ukrainian army, equipped with only three wheels, stopped suddenly with a clatter on the road. Someone got out of it, took out tools and started repairing the damaged machine – Askold describes the situation, as quoted by The Independent. As he says: the man encountered is a soldier nicknamed “American.” They talk for a while. A Russian combat drone spotted us on the way. We were going as fast as possible, but we couldn’t overtake him or get rid of him. He dropped that bomb, but fortunately it hit the asphalt and not us. Destroyed we have only the wheel.
“American” admitted that as soon as they fix the wheel, they return to the front to near Vovchansk. His unit was transferred here from another part of the more than 600-kilometer-long front line in Ukraine. He won’t say exactly from where, but reveals that they ended up here on May 7. By then, it was already becoming clear that the Russian forces gathering near the border were ready for action. The attack, which the whole world is now talking about, began on May 9.
This is what the beginning of the fighting near Kharkov looked like
– The Russians are dumping everything they have on us. The fighting is close to their border, so it’s easy for them to bring in new people, supplies, and move around with armored vehicles. On top of that, they are shelling us from their side of the border, and it’s easier for them to operate with helicopters and planes – tells “American.”
– The Russians sent fresh assault troops to begin with, for ground attacks. It’s against the rules, that’s not how it’s done. Usually there are bombardments first, and then infantry enters the clear area to clear it. Here they used the soldiers like cannon fodder to tire us out and discover positions. We killed huge numbers of them. Only after them did trained and experienced units enter.
– They have only occupied the northern part of the city, and some have dug in at a nearby factory. Street fighting occurred during attempts to seize more of the city of Vovchansk – As the soldier speaks, regular explosions can be heard all around, the rumble of “Grad” rockets taking off, and the whirr of drone engines.
It’s amazing, but here several hundred surveillance and combat drones from both sides are constantly hovering in the sky. “The American” was lucky, as many of his comrades were killed when kamikaze drones, or FPVs, flying at nearly 80 kilometers per hour, pursued them running for cover in a bunker or trench.
KAB, or glide bombs a Wowchansk
The biggest threat now, however, is posed by glide bombs, which the Russians are using indiscriminately during their ongoing offensive near Kharkov. They are so effective that there is, for the first time, a real concern among Ukrainian commanders that the Russians will reach closer than 30 km from Kharkiv and the city will again – as at the beginning of the invasion in 2022 – be in artillery range. This would be a tragedy for Kharkiv.
Glide bombs, are also called KAB. This is a Ukrainian acronym for the term “guided aerial bomb.” These are old-style bombs, of the type dropped by bombers during World War II. Unfortunately, they are still in operation, and it is estimated that Russia has hundreds of thousands of such bombs in storage and has cheaply and easily converted them into a type of guided bomb. Mainly because some of them are equipped with GPS guidance systems, as well as attached wings. They are the ones that enable the bombs to glide down, and this greatly increases their range.
These bombs proved difficult to intercept. Own too makes it so that Ukrainian soldiers can no longer rely on the safety of trenches or bunkers. They will not protect against bombs weighing up to a ton and a half. They also contain 30 to 80 times more explosives than standard artillery shells, for which Ukrainian shelters are prepared.
Wowchansk: civilians die here
“American” describes the attack: KABs cause massive damage. They can demolish entire buildings, and on top of that, if they hit centrally, even into a deep bunker. The risk of death is very high. Kiev estimates that the Russians dropped more than 200 glide bombs near the city of Vovchansk last week alone.
A large part of the dozens of civilian casualties died at Vovchansk precisely from gliding bombs. 66-year-old Lilia is one of the people just evacuated by the police. Until now, she lived with her 86-year-old mother in Hrafske, one of the villages south of the city of Vovchansk. We hook her up. He recounts that despite the heavy fighting and explosions, his elderly mother refused to leave home. The daughter left the village only after her mother’s death. A gliding bomb fell in their garden.
Russians bombed an evacuation point, a resort and a park
Police risk their lives here many times a day to save civilians. He takes them from their homes in armored vehicles and drives them to a collection point. There, for example, they transfer to buses or buses that will take them to refugee centers in Kharkiv.
Askold Krushelnycky was at one such collection point, just minutes after three glider bombs exploded. Fortunately, evacuees and rescue workers left the city in time, but the center was completely destroyed. The surrounding trees are fallen and torn down. The branches are still smoldering.
Last Sunday, an attack by two such rockets killed at least seven people, including a woman seven months pregnant. Many others were injured, while staying at a resort north of Kharkiv.
The lakeside resort in Cherkassy Lozova, still looked like a typical place for holiday recreation until May 19, at 11:02 on Sunday morning. Now the pine houses standing around the pool with the bar and restaurant are scarred with debris. The main building of the center burned down completely.
The Kharkiv region’s chief prosecutor for the Kharkiv region’s affairs. War crimes officer Oleksandr Filchakov, and also head of the Kharkiv District Prosecutor’s Office, told the British daily The Independent that he believes the attack was a double act. Two Iskander-M missiles, which were intentionally fired 10 minutes apart, struck here. So that the emergency services would have already arrived on the scene in time to carry out another massacre on the second strike. The Russians sometimes suggest that those missiles that kill civilians have gone off course. At the same time, they boast that their Iskander missiles are super accurate. Then where is the truth? I think here. Two rockets arrived in a 10-minute interval at exactly the same spot.
As the prosecutor adds, there are no military facilities in the area, and everyone at the center was a civilian. There was not a single soldier there, only people who came with their children. They thought that on Sunday, at least for a few hours, they would forget about the daily raids on Kharkiv.
The second bullet, said Oleksandr Filchakov, wounded a medic and a policeman and damaged an ambulance and a police car.
Also on Sunday, five people were killed and at least eight wounded in villages east of Kharkiv in Russian airstrikes, from glide bombs, rockets and drones. In Kharkiv itself, two people were wounded as a result of airstrikes on a park where children were playing and the city’s cemetery. The civilian death toll over the weekend was so high that Kharkiv region authorities declared Monday, May 20, a day of mourning.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s call of despair
President Volodymyr Zelenski and his military commanders and Ukraine’s foreign allies have condemned the obfuscations, which include. The U.S., but also other countries have imposed on the use of weapons, handed over to Kiev. Decisions by Western politicians mean that supplied equipment cannot be used against targets inside Russia. And it is, after all, where all of Moscow’s arsenal stands, which Putin is using to terrorize Kharkiv once again. There are concerns that such a move could draw NATO into a direct conflict with Russia. Ukrainian officials, on the other hand, believe they must defend the country by any means possible.
Zelenski, in an interview with Reuters, again called on the U.S. to lift restrictions by America and other allies on the use of their weapons inside Russia. Although Zelenski said he understood the partners’ concerns, he insisted on bold decisions. In particular, to speed up the transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine, but also to allow aircraft from other countries to help protect Ukraine’s skies. If only until the eagerly awaited F-16s have already arrived in Kiev.
Ukraine is holding Russia back for now. However, the commanders know that Russia will continue to hit Ukraine from the other side of the border and will do so without fear of retaliation,. In addition, Ukrainian intelligence reported yesterday that an additional 10,000 Moscow troops, including units from Chechnya and three regiments of motorized riflemen, are amassing on the Russian side near the border with Ukraine’s Sumy region, some 160 kilometers north of Kharkov.
– It’s a matter of will,” says President Zelenski. – You repeat that you are afraid of escalation. You are used to Ukrainians dying. For our people, this is not an escalation. This is a matter of survival. A matter of life or death.
Read more in the PostPravda:
What is happening near Kharkiv? Report from the front
Battle for Kharkiv, or lost in translation?
