Russian forces shelled the border regions of Sumy and Kharkiv on May 18, wounding civilians, while pitched battles took place near the cities of Kramatorsk, Pokrovsk, and Kurakhiv, military and civilian officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that the fighting "is difficult, but the Armed Forces are giving a worthy rebuff to the occupier."
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Speaking in his evening address, Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian military repelled a Russian assault in the area of Chasiv Yar in the Donetsk region. Ukrainian soldiers destroyed more than 20 units of armored vehicles of the occupier, he claimed, thanking “the guys who repelled the Russian assault on Chasiv Yar.”
The village lies on high ground that Russia has been fighting desperately to capture. Ukrainian forces have repelled the effort so far.
Seizing Chasiv Yar would allow Russia to threaten Kostyantynivka and its rail and roadway and crack the door toward Kramatorsk to the north, and Slovyansk, both large population centers and redoubts of Ukrainian troops and supplies.
In the Chernihiv region on May 18 one person was wounded by shelling, according to the press services of the local regional military administrations.
According to information from the Sumy regional military administration, Russian forces as of 9 p.m. local time on May 18 shelled border territories and settlements in the region 46 times, wounding one person. It said 284 explosions were recorded.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said seven of 77 combat clashes during the day were still ongoing in the evening, the "hottest" being in the Pokrovsk direction.
According to the military, Ukrainian aviation on May 18 struck 18 areas of concentration of Russian forces and two of their anti-aircraft missile systems.
SEE ALSO: A New Russian Offensive Stretches Ukrainian Forces. Possibly To The Breaking Point.Ukrainian soldiers carried out assaults four times with the aim of knocking the enemy out of the occupied positions, the General Staff said.
Ten clashes took place in the Kharkiv area during the day after Russian forces carried out an air strike on a residential area of the city of Kharkiv using two guided aerial bombs.
Ukrainian prosecutors said they were investigating the air strike, which wounded five civilians, including a 13-year-old girl and 16-year-old male, as a potential war crime.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said its forces captured the village of Starytsya in the Kharkiv region on May 18.
It was not possible to verify either side’s battlefield claims.
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.
Earlier on May 18, a Russian missile attack on Ukraine's southern Black Sea port city of Odesa killed one person and wounded eight others, regional Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram.
Ukraine's Emergency Situations Service reported that the strike hit a warehouse and a fire broke out on an area of 800 square meters, which firefighters were extinguishing.