Russian forces maintained their relentless assault on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on May 20 -- including a massive drone attack on the city itself -- but local officials said the outgunned Ukrainian troops still held about 60 percent of the border town of Vovchansk, the focal point of Moscow’s drive over recent weeks.
"The enemy continues to try to drive the armed forces of Ukraine out of Vovchansk," Roman Semenukha, deputy head of the regional military administration, said on national television.
"The town is about 60 percent controlled by the armed forces of Ukraine, [but] the assaults have not stopped.”
Semenukha said the Russians were concentrating their efforts on Vovchansk and Lyptsi, another area settlement with some 4,500 prewar residents.
Ukraine earlier said it had downed all 29 Shahed-type kamikaze drones launched by Russia against Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the early hours of May 20.
Elsewhere, Ukraine’s military also said Russia had launched an Iskandar-M ballistic missile but did not say whether it had been intercepted.
Russian troops began shelling border settlements in the Kharkiv region on May 10 and launched a ground offensive in the area of Vovchansk. On May 16, Russian units appeared to have entered Vovchansk, about 5 kilometers from the border, and the site of the fiercest fighting in the north.
The capture of Vovchansk -- with a prewar population of about 17,500 -- would mark Russia’s most important advance since the offensive began in the Kharkiv region as the Kremlin looks to stretch Ukraine’s forces in the northeast.
Kremlin-installed leader Leonid Pasechnik on May 20 said Ukrainian shelling had hit a fuel depot and ignited a blaze in the town of Dovzhansk in the occupied Luhansk region.
It was at least the third time in the past month that Ukrainian shelling had reportedly hit a Russian-held fuel depot.
Battlefield claims cannot immediately be verified.
Meanwhile, the United States offered new words of support for Kyiv, urging other allies to maintain deliveries of weapons to aid in Ukraine’s defense.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and some 50 defense chiefs from around the world were meeting on May 20 to coordinate additional deliveries of military aid to Ukraine.
“We're meeting in a moment of challenge,” Austin said as he vowed to keep U.S. weapons flowing “week after week.”
However, in an interview published by Reuters on May 20, Zelenskiy complained that Western allies are taking too long to make key decisions on additional military support.
"Every decision to which we, then later everyone together, comes to is late by around one year," he said.
