Inside Ukraine’s new northern frontline

Published

1 year ago

May 19, 2024

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While fighting continues in the east, a new front has been opened in the north of Ukraine.

In the early hours of Friday 10 May, Russian ground troops, backed by warplanes, drones and artillery, crossed the Ukrainian border into Kharkiv region.

In recent months, fighting in Ukraine has been focused across front lines in the east of the country. This development has focused attention on Ukraine’s northeast and its second city of Kharkiv, which lies less than 20 miles from the border.

Fighting around Vovchansk

Footage captured in the early stages of the Russian offensive shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers fighting in woodland.

Sky News has geolocated a section of this clip, which shows the troops withdrawing south, away from the border.

Other video provided to Sky News by Ukrainian sources sheds further light on how fighting unfolded in the early stages of Russia’s assault from the north.

Filmed from a drone, footage shows a group of Russian soldiers on Tuesday entering Vovchansk along the main road connecting to the town from the northwest.

In separate footage, a group can be seen moving southwest around 140 metres from this position. A further 400 metres in this direction, a group was filmed being targeted by Ukrainian forces while appearing to carry one of their wounded.

Other videos shared by the Ukrainians show that by this time, some Russian forces had moved from the outskirts into a residential area in the west of Vovchansk. They can be seen moving between buildings and are filmed being targeted by a Ukrainian drone.

Footage posted on 16 May suggests Russian troops in the area have been able to make steady progress through the town from the northwest. A group was filmed outside the town’s hospital, with one falling from the building’s first floor.

While on the ground, fighting in Vovchansk appears to have been relatively contained to the west of the town, it has been subject to intense bombing in recent days.

Drone footage posted on 14 May captured smoke rising from multiple locations across the town, showing the scale of Russian shelling.

Just west of Vovchansk, Russian forces entered the villages Buhruvatka and Ohirtseve.

In a photograph geolocated to Ohirtseve by Sky News, a group of soldiers posed with a flag bearing the face of Chechnya’s former leader Akhmad Kadyrov, who was killed in 2004.

Russians advance towards Lyptsi

Further west, Russian forces have made progress in the direction of the town of Lyptsi. Located just south of the Russian border, the town is a mere 20km from the city of Kharkiv.

Geolocated images suggest some Russian forces approached the Ukrainian border from multiple locations. One posted on 10 May shows a collection of destroyed Russian vehicles just north of the Ukrainian border town Pylna.

Footage released on 11 May suggests this was not the only point at which Russians attempted to cross the border, as the video shows a Ukrainian drone targeting Russian vehicles between the towns of Strilecha and Krasne.

From the north, Russian troops moved towards Lyptsi along a road running southwest from the border. Videos posted in recent days show they were targeted repeatedly by Ukrainian drones along this route.

Drone footage posted on 15 May shows the scale of shelling that accompanied this ground offensive, targeting Ukrainian positions ahead of Russian forces.

While Russia has made significant progress in their push south, Ukrainian forces have fought back. Footage posted on 15 May shows a Russian position just north of Lyptsi being bombed and approached by a group of Ukrainian soldiers, who are filmed capturing surviving Russians.

A ‘buffer zone’

While it is yet to be seen how far Russian troops will advance from the north, Vladimir Putin has claimed that the offensive is not an effort to capture the city of Kharkiv.

In a statement on 17 May, he said: “I have said publicly that if it continues, we will be forced to create a security zone, a sanitary zone,” claiming this was the current goal of Russian troops in the north of Ukraine.

For the moment, most fighting is still concentrated in the east, where Russia occupies vast areas of Ukrainian territory.

World

The fight for the Arctic – where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

Published

10 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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The fight for the Arctic - where climate change is giving Russia room to manoeuvre

The twin threats of climate change and Russian malign activity in the Arctic must be taken “deadly seriously,” David Lammy has warned.

Sky News joined him on the furthest reaching tour of the Arctic by a British foreign secretary.

We travelled to Svalbard – a Norwegian archipelago that is the most northern settled land on Earth, 400 miles from the North Pole.

It is at the heart of an Arctic region facing growing geopolitical tension and feeling the brunt of climate change.

Mr Lammy told us the geopolitics of the region must be taken “deadly seriously” due to climate change and “the threats we’re seeing from Russia”.

We witnessed the direct impact of climate change along Svalbard’s coastline and inland waterways. There is less ice, we were told, compared to the past.

The melting ice is opening up the Arctic and allowing Russia more freedom to manoeuvre.

“We do see Russia’s shadow fleet using these waters,” Mr Lammy said. “We do see increased activity from submarines with nuclear capability under our waters and we do see hybrid sabotage of undersea cables at this time.”

In Tromso, further south, the foreign secretary was briefed by Norwegian military commanders.

Vice Admiral Rune Andersen, the Chief of Norwegian Joint Headquarters, told Sky News the Russian threat was explicit.

“Russia has stated that they are in confrontation with the West and are utilising a lot of hybrid methods to undermine Western security,” he said.

But it’s not just Vladimir Putin they’re worried about. Norwegian observers are concerned by US president Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Russian leader too.

Karsten Friis, a Norwegian defence and security analyst, told Sky News: “If he’s too soft on Putin, if he is kind of normalising relations with Russia, I wouldn’t be surprised.

“I would expect Russia to push us, to test us, to push borders, to see what we can do as Europeans.”

Changes in the Arctic mean new challenges for the NATO military alliance – including stepping up activity to deter threats, most of all from Russia.

In Iceland, we toured a NATO airbase with the foreign secretary.

There, he said maintaining robust presence in the Arctic was essential for western security.

“Let’s be clear, in this challenging geopolitical moment the high north and the Arctic is a heavily contested arena and we should be under no doubt that NATO and the UK need to protect it for our own national security.”

This is also about distracting Russia, drawing away resources that could have been used in the war in Ukraine and deterring it in the future.

Because the more Arctic opens up, the more this once pristine wilderness is becoming the arena of national rivalry and potentially conflict.

World

‘What did they do to be burned and bombed?’: Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

Published

16 hours ago

May 29, 2025

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'What did they do to be burned and bombed?': Charity calls on UK to offer Gaza children life-saving treatment

A British charity has written to the prime minister and foreign secretary, urging them to allow seriously ill children from Gaza into the UK to receive life-saving medical treatment.

Warning: This article contains images readers may find distressing

The co-founder of Project Pure Hope told Sky News it was way past the time for words.

“Now, we need action,” Omar Dinn said.

He’s identified two children inside Gaza who urgently need help and is appealing to the UK government to issue visas as a matter of urgency.

Israel-Gaza latest: Netanyahu reportedly accepts US ceasefire plan

Britain has taken only two patients from Gaza for medical treatment in 20 months of Israeli bombardment.

“Most of the people affected by this catastrophe that’s unfolding in Gaza are children,” he continued. “And children are the most vulnerable.

“They have nothing to do with the politics, and we really just need to see them for what they are.

“They are children, just like my children, just like everybody’s children in this country – and we have the ability to help them.”

Sky News has been sent video blogs from British surgeons working in Gaza right now which show the conditions and difficulties they’re working under.

They prepare for potential immediate evacuation whilst facing long lists, mainly of children, needing life-saving emergency treatment day after day.

Dr Victoria Rose told us: “Every time I come, I say it’s really bad, but this is on a completely different scale now. It’s mass casualties. It’s utter carnage.

“We are incapable of getting through this volume. We don’t have the personnel. We don’t have the medical supplies. And we really don’t have the facilities.

“We are the last standing hospital in the south of Gaza. We really are on our knees now.”

One of her patients is three-year-old Hatem, who was badly burned when an Israeli airstrike hit the family apartment.

His pregnant mother and father were both killed, leaving him an orphan. He has 35 percent burns on his small body.

“It’s a massive burn for a little guy like this,” Dr Rose says. “He’s so adorable. His eyelids are burnt. His hands are burnt. His feet are burnt.”

Hatem’s grandfather barely leaves his hospital bedside. Hatem Senior told us: “What did these children do wrong to suffer such injuries? To be burned and bombed? We ask God to grant them healing.”

The second child identified by the charity is Karam, who, aged one, is trying to survive in a tent in deeply unhygienic surroundings with a protruding intestine.

He’s suffering from a birth defect called Hirschsprung disease, which could be easily operated on with the right skills and equipment – unavailable to him in Gaza right now.

Karam’s mother Manal told our Gaza camera crew: “No matter how much I describe how much my son is suffering, I wouldn’t be able to describe it enough. I swear I am constantly crying.”

Children are among the bulk of casualties – some 16,000 have been killed, according to the latest figures from local health officials – and make up the majority of those being operated on, according to the British surgical team on the ground.