Evacuees from assault on Kharkiv face new danger

Russian attacks have forced 10,000 civilians from their homes but aid workers lack funds to house and feed them

- TOM WATLING

The Russian assault on Ukraine's northeastern region of Kharkiv threatens to leave thousands of newly displaced civilians without homes, aid workers have told The Independent, as the United Nations grapples with an "extremely worrying" shortage of humanitarian aid.

More than 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been forced to evacuate their homes after Russian forces launched a multipronged, cross-border attack into the Kharkiv region on 10 May. Around 66 square miles have been occupied in the past two weeks in the Russian assault, while a number of other villages have been abandoned, militarised or destroyed by Russian shelling. Most of those civilians have been vulnerable, according to charities operating in Kharkiv - women, children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

"The situation is really tense," says Viktoriia Tiutiunnyk, an employee of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), who has just left Kharkiv. "A lot of evacuees from the bordering areas have come to the city. They are afraid the situation will get worse. They are desperate and they don't know what to do."

Ukrainian military officials had warned that Russia was massing troops on the border for months but the assault still took many by surprise, not least the Ukrainian soldiers stationed there, who suddenly found their communications via Elon Musk's Starlink satellites had been knocked out by Russian signal jammers.

The ensuing advance - Russian forces have pushed around six miles into the region in one of two attacks and more than four in the other - has been largely stabilised, but the humanitarian impact of the assault is only building.