Ukraine sent reinforcements as fighting raged in the border areas of the region, the defence ministry said, adding that Russia had pounded the frontier town of Vovchansk with guided aerial bombs and artillery.

“Russia has begun a new wave of counteroffensive actions in this direction,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told a news conference in Kyiv. “Now there is a fierce battle in this direction.”

Ukraine had warned of a Russian buildup in the area, potentially signalling preparations for an offensive or a ploy to divert and pin down Ukraine’s overstretched and outnumbered defenders. It was unclear if Moscow would develop the attack.

In its evening battlefield update, the Ukrainian General Staff said for the first time that Russia was also building up forces to the north of Kharkiv near the Ukrainian regions of Sumy and parts of Chernihiv.

Russian guided bombs kill two in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, local official says

Russia attacked the Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine with guided bombs on Wednesday (May 1), killing at least two people and wounding two others, local officials said.

The two people were killed when a car was struck in the village of Zolochiv, where a private home was also hit, the chief of Zolochiv military civilian administration, Viktor Kovalenko, said.

Ten private residences were also damaged but no casualties reported in a Russian attack on the city of Kharkiv, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.

The Kharkiv region has come under intense fire this spring as Russian forces attacked civilian and energy infrastructure, and Ukraine says its air defenses are increasingly stretched more than two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Tuesday (April 30) Kyiv needed “a significant acceleration” in deliveries of weaponry from its partners to enable its troops to face advancing Russian troops in several sectors of the front line.