Kyiv. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukrainian forces have regained control of areas in the northeastern Kharkiv region where Russian troops entered earlier this month. Zelensky said in his video address on Friday evening, “Our troops have now succeeded in taking control of the border area where Russian troops entered.” Zelensky’s statement appears to be different from the comments made by Russian officials.
Russian forces now control more than half of the town of Vovchansk, three miles (five kilometers) inside the border, Viktor Vodolatsky, a member of Russia’s lower house of parliament, said, according to Russian state news agency TASS. Vovchansk has been the center of the fighting since Russia launched an attack on the Kharkiv region on May 10.
Vodolatsky also claimed that once Vovchansk was secured, Russian forces would target the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk in the neighbouring Donetsk region. These claims could not be immediately independently verified. The city of Kharkiv is about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the Russian border.
On the other hand, financial officials of the G-7, a group of seven rich democratic countries of the world, said that they have made progress towards agreement on the US proposal to recover more money for Ukraine from Russian assets seized in their country. However, the ministers gave up working on the final agreement before the summit of national leaders in June.
“We are making progress in our discussions on possible ways to bring forward extraordinary profits made from immovable Russian sovereign assets for the benefit of Ukraine,” the draft statement said. Despite the progress made at the meeting in Stresa on the banks of Lago Maggiore in northern Italy, the final decision on the use of the assets will rest with the G-7 national leaders, including US President Joe Biden, at their annual meeting at a summit in Fasano in southern Italy next month.
Tags: Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin
FIRST PUBLISHED : May 25, 2024, 23:27 IST