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Ukraine said it was battling an attempted Russian incursion into the Sumy region on Sunday moscow Had forcibly removed 50 people from a border village.
ukraineHuman rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets accused Russian forces of abducting about 50 mostly elderly Ukrainian citizens on Russian territory. Forced transfer of civilians is considered a war crime and a crime against humanity.
In a statement on Telegram, Lubinets said Russian forces illegally detained residents of the village of Hrabovské on Thursday before taking them there. Russia On Saturday.
Lubinets said he contacted Russia’s human rights commissioner, seeking information on the civilians’ whereabouts and conditions and demanding their immediate return to Ukraine.
Ukrainian public broadcaster Saspilne and the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet said Russian troops entered Ukrainian territory in the area of the village of Hrabovske on Saturday night.
“Fighting is currently ongoing in the village of Grabovske,” Ukraine’s Joint Task Force said on Sunday. He said his troops were “making efforts to drive the occupiers back into Russian territory”.
While fighting in Ukraine has consistently been most intense in the east, Russia has also sought to gain a foothold in several villages in the northern region of Sumy in recent months. Shelling on towns in the area has also increased.
Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy military administration, said authorities had begun evacuating residents of border villages who had previously refused to relocate. He did not identify the affected locations, but urged residents of border areas to agree to evacuate.
On Saturday, Russian forces continued offensive operations in Sumy, but with no confirmed territorial gains, the Institute for the Study of War said in an update.
Fighting has also been reported in Kharkiv, a US-based think tank monitoring the war said Sunday night, adding that Russia was deliberately targeting previously quiet parts of the front line to give the artificial impression that it was making widespread gains.
“Russian forces are conducting a new cognitive warfare campaign through limited cross-border attacks across a wide section of the previously inactive Northern Front Line in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions,” it said.
kremlin ISW said it wanted to convince the West that front lines across Ukraine were weakening and that Kiev should accept all of Russia’s demands.
It added, “ISW continues to assess that the front in Ukraine is not at risk of rapid collapse and that a Russian victory is not inevitable.”