Russia is pushing for attacks in northeastern Ukraine and is seeking a buffer zone on the border

Russian forces continued to press a tough advance into northeastern Ukraine on Saturday, moving closer to a village about 10 miles from Kharkiv’s outer ring and raising fears that the city, Ukraine’s second-largest, could soon come within range of Russian artillery.

The Ukrainian army said on Saturday that Russian troops had attempted to breach its defenses near the village of Lyptsi, just north of Kharkiv. It said the attacks had been repelled, but maps of the battlefield created by independent groups analyzing publicly available videos of the fighting showed Russian troops had almost reached the edge of the village.

Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade, which defends Lyptsi, posted a video on Telegram on Friday afternoon showing Russian soldiers advancing on the village on foot and attacking in small groups between rows of trees. The brigade said it fired rockets at the Russians, forcing them to retreat.

Russian troops opened a new front in northeastern Ukraine a week ago, storming across the border and quickly capturing about 10 settlements. Ukrainian officials and military analysts described this as an attempt to bolster Ukraine’s already outnumbered armed forces.

The Khartia Brigade, for example, was relocated from another frontline hotspot, around Ocheretyne, a village in the southeast. Last month, Russian forces captured Ocheretyne, creating a breakthrough in Ukraine’s defenses.

But experts say another, perhaps more immediate, goal for Russia could be to push deep enough into Ukrainian territory to push Kiev forces away from the border, thereby creating a buffer zone that would prevent Ukrainians from attacking Russian cities with artillery to attack. Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said Friday that this was the goal of the current offensive.

A buffer zone could also allow Russian forces to get close enough to Kharkiv to bombard it with artillery shells, exacerbating Moscow’s campaign to inflict hardship on the city’s residents through airstrikes on residential neighborhoods and targeted attacks on the city’s power plants. to turn off the power.

“Such a buffer zone of 10 to 15 kilometers would certainly pose a problem for Kharkiv,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine’s government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies.

Further Russian advances would return Kharkiv, now home to around 1.2 million people, to the situation in which it found itself in the first months of the war. In 2022, Russian troops reached the city’s outer ring, causing hundreds of thousands to flee.

Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov has described Russia’s advance on the city as aimed at sowing chaos and panic. But he reiterated last week that there were no plans to evacuate the population. Instead, the city served as a temporary home for thousands of Ukrainian civilians who had fled fighting in the region from villages like Lyptsi or Vovchansk further east.

However, Kharkiv is not entirely safe. In recent months, Russia has increasingly attacked the city with powerful guided missiles called glide bombs, which can deliver hundreds of tons of explosives, and S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, which Moscow now uses to attack targets on the ground.

“The time it takes for S-300 missiles to reach Kharkiv is only a few minutes,” Ilya Yevlash, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force, said in an interview this month. “There is no time to respond to these threats.”

Only American Patriot air defense systems can intercept short-range S-300 missiles, Mr. Yevlash said, and Ukraine does not have enough of them. “We can count them on the fingers of one hand,” he said.

Ukrainian officials have urged their Western partners to send more. “We urgently need air defense to protect Kharkiv and other cities in northeastern Ukraine,” Andriy Yermak, the head of President Volodymy Zelensky’s office, said in an interview with The New York Times last week. “It’s time.”

Mr Putin said on Friday that Russian forces had no plans to take the city themselves. Military experts also say that Russia lacks the forces for such an operation.

However, getting closer to Kharkiv will not be an easy task.

So far, Russian forces have advanced through largely depopulated and poorly fortified areas. The invasion of Lyptsi, home to 4,000 people before the war and dotted with houses and buildings, will force Russian troops into more difficult street fighting.

Emil Kastehelmi, an analyst with the Finnish Black Bird Group, which analyzed satellite images and footage of the battlefield, noted on the social platform X that “a long chain of villages” separates Lyptsi from Kharkiv. One advance after another, he said, “would force the Russians to fight their way through over 17 kilometers of built-up areas.”

In an interview with the Agence France-Presse news agency on Saturday, Mr. Zelensky said he expected Russia to step up its offensive in the northeast, possibly by opening new fronts elsewhere, such as the Sumy region north of Kharkiv.

That would place even further strain on the Ukrainian military, which already has to defend a front line more than 600 miles long. To address the troop shortage, the Ukrainian government has adopted a number of measures to expand the pool of people eligible for conscription.

A mobilization law passed last month that provides incentives for volunteers and new penalties for those who try to avoid compulsory military service came into force on Saturday. Ukrainian men now have two months to update their personal information at military recruiting centers or online to help authorities identify potential conscripts.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff contributed to reporting from Brussels.