The Human Cost of a Hesitant Ukraine Policy; US Says RU Advances Have ‘stalled out’; RU Fails to Fulfill Its Kharkiv Opp; RUs TRY to Break Through on Pokrovsk Front; UKR Secures Majority of Vovchansk; RU Advances in East Part of Chasiv Yar, UKR Strike On RU’s Mozdok Military Airfield, LIVE UPDATES and LOTS MORE

The Human Cost of a Hesitant Ukraine Policy:

Shortages of weapons and limits on their use left Kharkiv oblast vulnerable. Iryna Tsybukh saved lives and ended up losing hers.

Iryna Tsybukh rescued the wounded from Ukraine’s bloodiest battles. While working as a combat medic, Ms. Tsybukh, 25, slept in abandoned homes a short drive from the front, and when the call for help came she and her crew raced to the trenches, often under shelling or through mined territory, to get soldiers the medical care they needed.

Ira, as her friends called her, “was always as close as possible” to the action “and to the place where her help was most needed,” said Julia Kochetova, a Ukrainian photojournalist who sometimes accompanied her friend at the front. In late May that place was Kharkiv oblast just south of the Russian border, a region that has recently borne the consequences of America’s hesitant Ukraine policy.

As Russia was pummeling the Kharkiv region with missiles, drones and glide bombs, U.S. lawmakers signed off on some $60 billion in aid for Ukraine on April 20, after months of delay. The Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne reports that at least 216 civilians have been killed in the oblast in 2024, including 106 in May alone. The city of Kharkiv, the country’s second most populous at 1.3 million, has seen fatal strikes on a leisure center, a printing house and a crowded shopping mall in the past few weeks. Air-defense shortages remain so acute that if city residents step outside, they “don’t have a clear understanding if they will be alive in the second moment or not,” Mayor Ihor Terekhov said late last month.

Brig. Gen. Serhii Holubtsov, the aviation chief of Ukraine’s air force, said Russia is launching a minimum of 15 glide bombs each day at the city of Kharkiv and 30 and 60 across the oblast. These bombs can glide between 25 and 40 miles from the planes that launch them and leave “a crater in which you can fit a truck,” he said. The biggest glide bombs can destroy a five-story residential building and send shrapnel flying nearly 1,000 yards.

The U.S. has long prohibited Ukraine from using the weapons it provides to strike Russian territory. Around Kharkiv, that policy has created a sanctuary for Russian attackers. On May 10 Russia began an offensive operation targeting Kharkiv oblast, and the next day it dropped at least 20 glide bombs on the frontline village of Vovchansk, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine lacks the air-defense interceptors to shield effectively against incoming missiles and drones, and U.S. delays in providing military aid created severe ammunition shortages across the Ukrainian front. Ukraine still needs to hold the line against the Russians pressing in on Kharkiv. So its soldiers had to stay put and endure the aerial and ground assault, despite the casualties.

Ira wanted to give those wounded in Kharkiv a chance to survive. “I am not a person who dreamed of working as a paramedic all my life,” she said in 2022. She had periodically volunteered as a combat medic before February 2022, but she also worked in Kyiv on the reform of the public broadcaster Suspilne and made documentaries. Someday she wanted to own a house, plant tomatoes and have children. But “a full-scale war changed everything,” she told Elle Ukraine.—>READ MORE HERE (or HERE)

Kremlin claims Ukranian shelling killed 25 people as US says Russian advances have ‘stalled out’:

Russian officials contend Ukrainian shelling killed at least 25 people Friday, including a 9-year-old child.

Vladimir Saldo, who was installed by Russia as the governor of the occupied southern Kherson region, confirmed 22 people were dead after missiles and bombs pummeled a crowded market in the small town of Sadove in Kherson.

It was unknown how many people had been wounded in the attack.

A second Ukrainian strike on Luhansk killed another three people and left 35 wounded.

Friday’s offensive followed a Russian drone attack overnight Thursday that destroyed a shopping mall.

No casualties were reported from that attack.

Late last week, White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said long-delayed U.S. weapons are now helping Ukrainian forces change the trajectory of the ongoing fighting around Kharkiv on the country’s northeastern border with Russia.

“They have been able to thwart Russian advances,” Kirby said.

“The Russians really have kind of stalled out up there [and] … their advance on Kharkiv is all but over because they ran into the first line of defenses of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and basically stopped, if not pulled back, some units.”

Meanwhile, a Russian military court has started to prosecute three Russian soldiers for abducting and murdering a woman from Luhansk in 2022. —>READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to +++++relevant+++++ and related stories:

+++++Russia-Ukraine News LATEST UPDATES: (REUTERSREUTERS) (AP) (NY POST) and (WSJ)+++++

+++++Russia fails to fulfill its Kharkiv operation, Zelensky says+++++

+++++Russians try to break through on Pokrovsk front – Ukrainian General Staff report +++++

+++++Ukraine forces secure majority of Vovchansk as Russia reinforces blockades+++++

+++++Russian army advances in eastern part of Chasiv Yar+++++

+++++First Ukrainian Drone Strike on Mozdok Military Airfield in Russia’s Caucasus Mountains+++++

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