Ukrainian Healthcare Center documents 165 cases of health care facilities damaged
The BBC reports Russian invasion forces in Ukraine may be retreating from Kharkiv in the north. The mayor reports no shelling of the town for five days:
The mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, has told the BBC that the Russians have withdrawn from the Kharkiv city area in the direction of the Russian border.
He says that Russian troops had only ever managed to enter a small part of the key north-eastern city once, and were not there for a long time.
“The Russians were constantly shelling Kharkiv because they were staying very close to the city. And due to the efforts of Kharkiv territorial defence and Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russians have withdrawn out far from the city area in the direction of the Russian border,” he says.
Another report from CNN offers additional detail:
Ukrainian officials said this week that they continue to push towards the Russian border, liberating tiny villages on the outskirts of Kharkiv, the country’s second largest city before the invasion began. The Ukrainian advances threaten the symbolic embarrassment of expelling the Kremlin’s forces back to their own border and while posing the strategic threat of cutting Russia’s supply lines into Ukraine and its forces further south in the Donbas region. The advances have been swift over the past weeks.
Russian forces continue to target civilians. Two auto convoys attempting to flee the region have come under Russian fire near Staryi Saltiv, locals tell CNN. Multiple civilians including a 13-year-old girl were killed.
In the eastern Luhansk region, Ukraine claims to have destroyed a Russian battalion attempting to cross a temporary bridge over the Siverskyi Donets River (Daily Beast):
New satellite images from BlackSky intelligence firm show the parts that remain of a pontoon bridge built by Russian troops to access the Ukrainian territory. Images showed smoke rising from the bridge after it was hit by Ukrainian artillery on May 10, leaving Russian tanks and trucks protruding from the water. It is unclear how many Russian troops died in the strike, but Forbes put its estimate at around 1,000 troops and 50 tanks. Britain’s defense intelligence said almost all of the Russian force’s armored vehicles were lost in the battle.
The BBC reports Russian forces have been relentless in their three fruitless attempts to establish bridges to cross the river. Oleh Zhdanov, a Ukrainian defense analyst, told the news service that the fighting is so fierce because the orders to take the territory came “from the very top.”
Since the invasion began, Russian forces have deliberately targeted “hospitals, clinics, maternity wards,” and other health infrastructure, Ukrainiain health officials allege and a guest video essay provided to the New York Times documents:
As of May 9, the Ukrainian Healthcare Center, a consultancy in Kyiv, had documented 165 cases of health care facilities damaged in the war, and the World Health Organization has identified some 200 such attacks.
Pavlo Kovtoniuk, the consultancy’s co-founder and a former deputy health minister of Ukraine, believes the attacks are meant to sow psychological terror. Aid organizations saw the same sorts of attacks in Syria, says Kovtoniuk. It is a pattern, not just a series of mistakes.
“The evidence for potential war crimes will take years to gather,” he says. “But I don’t need to wait that long to know that what I’m seeing every day is a murderous pattern.”
Few will be held to account. Vladimir Putin least likely of all.
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