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By Andrew E. Kramer
Photographs via Finbarr O’Reilly
Reports from villages in Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine.
At a high point in the war against Russia in Ukraine, as its army swept through Russian forces in the country’s northeast, a small-town police leader proudly hung a Ukrainian flag on his newly liberated town hall.
A year and a half later, police officer Oleksiy Kharkivskyi rushed to the burning ruins of the same city, Vovchansk, last week to evacuate the few remaining citizens as Russian forces closed in.
“Wherever they come from, it’s razed to the ground,” Kharkivskyi said of the advance of Russian troops, who returned to the region with scorched-earth ferocity, causing one of the largest population displacements since the early months of the war.
Russian troops crossed the Russian-Ukrainian border this month and headed toward Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which has a population of around one million. Military analysts say Russia does not have the troops to capture the city, but could move inland. of artillery range, which led to increased numbers of refugees.
From a military standpoint, the incursion appears to be aimed at putting pressure on Ukraine’s already scarce and ill-equipped forces by diverting troops from the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, which is still seen as the most likely target of a Russian offensive this summer. It has also had the destabilizing effect of sending thousands of dismayed and discouraged people from Ukraine’s deepest border region.
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