The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine near Kharkiv, reported on August 19 that two villages had been evacuated after a fire broke out at a munitions depot.
Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote on Telegram that no one was injured in the incident, which occurred during the night of August 18-19. He said the cause of the fire was being investigated.
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The previous day, Gladkov warned local residents to be wary of land mines that he said had been found along the border. He said the mines had been discovered after the area had purportedly been shelled by Ukrainian forces.
It was not possible to independently verify the reports.
Fighting has been intense in the area around Kharkiv for several days. Some 17 Ukrainian civilians were killed and 42 injured in the Kharkiv region by Russian shelling on August 18, the governor of the region, Oleh Synyehubov, wrote on Telegram, describing the shelling as “terrorism.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the Kharkiv shelling “a vile and cynical attack on civilians that has no justification.”
Russia has denied targeting civilians, saying the August 18 strikes in the Kharkiv region were carried out using “precision weaponry” and targeted “a temporary base for foreign mercenaries.”
The British Defense Ministry on August 19 posted on Twitter its assessment that Russian forces are trying “to force Ukraine to maintain significant forces [near Kharkiv] to prevent them from being employed as a counterattack force elsewhere.”
Kharkiv is just 15 kilometers from Russian lines and has faced nearly continuous shelling since Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February. Because of the city’s proximity to Russian forces, it is often targeted by “multiple rocket launchers and generally inaccurate are weapons” that have “caused devastation across large parts of the city,” the U.K. Defense Ministry wrote.