How Russia has advanced in Kharkiv despite warnings attack was coming

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So far this year Russia has continued to increase the size of its invasion force, to 510,000, and exploited the defenders’ air defence and munitions shortages to capture Avdiivka in February and seize a bridgehead north west of it in April.

Since March, as identified by Maria Avdeeva, a Ukrainian security expert, Russia has been engaged in a steady stream of online propaganda aimed at unsettling Kharkiv city and region residents.

Ukraine’s military difficulties have been caused in part by the four-month pause in weapon supplies from the US – finally resolved last month when a $61bn aid package passed Congress – and European countries’ struggle to ramp up arms manufacturing before late 2024.

But Jack Watling, a land warfare expert at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said Russia was also overcoming the limitations of its undertrained army and beginning “to compound its advantages” with munitions.

The analyst argued that Ukraine “has to defend a tremendous amount of territory, but is struggling with manpower issues” – meaning they do not have the capability to create Russian style fortifications along the entire northern frontier.

The battle is not a territorial struggle for Ukraine’s second city, but more likely a combination of a diversionary attack to weaken defensive lines in the Donbas and an attempt to use bombardment to turn Kharkiv into a ghost town.

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