Kharkiv fighting 'hotter than Bakhmut' as Ukraine gains shells, destroys Russian missile ship

On the morning of May 19, Ukrainian forces struck what they say was the last Russian warship equipped with cruise missiles in Sevastopol. The vessel, a Tsiklon-class ship, had been stationed in Crimea as part of Russia's Black Sea operations. The Ukrainian military announced the hit; Russia's defense ministry did not immediately respond, and independent verification remained impossible from outside the conflict zone.

But the destruction of a single ship, however significant, tells only part of the story unfolding across Ukraine's eastern front. In the Kharkiv region, soldiers are fighting under conditions they describe as more intense than anything they experienced during the grinding months around Bakhmut, the city that fell to Russian forces after months of brutal attrition. Pavlo, a gunner operating a howitzer with Ukraine's 92nd Separate Assault Brigade, laid out the reality in stark terms: constant attacks, waves of Russian infantry, relentless pressure around the clock. Yet something had shifted. Where Bakhmut left his unit starved for ammunition, Kharkiv brought supplies. "We didn't have shells there," he told Reuters. "Here, at least we have shells. They started delivering them. We have something to work with, to fight."

The difference ammunition makes in a war of attrition cannot be overstated. It transforms a unit from reactive to capable, from enduring to resisting. Ukrainian troops were achieving what their military described as "tangible" results against Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, though the situation remained dire near other key cities—Pokrovsk, Kramatorsk, and Kurakhove all remained under extreme pressure. The human cost was mounting. More than 14,000 people had been displaced from the Kharkiv region in recent days alone. The World Health Organization noted that nearly 189,000 more still lived within 25 kilometers of the Russian border, caught in a zone where the fighting showed no signs of abating.

Russian drones had struck energy infrastructure across the northern Sumy region early on Wednesday, cutting power to parts of the cities of Shostka and Konotop. Emergency services scrambled to restore electricity while officials warned of a possible Russian push into the region itself. The pattern was familiar: strikes on civilian infrastructure, displacement, the grinding pressure of an invasion that had now lasted 819 days.

Meanwhile, the international machinery of support was moving, if slowly. The European Union formally adopted a plan to fund Ukraine's defense using profits generated from $300 billion in frozen Russian central bank assets held in EU countries. The arrangement would direct 90 percent of the proceeds into an EU-run military aid fund, with the remaining 10 percent supporting Ukraine in other ways. The EU projected the frozen assets would generate between €15 billion and €20 billion in profits by 2027, with the first tranche expected to reach Ukraine in July. It was a significant commitment, but Ukraine's foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, made clear his government's preference: not the interest on seized assets, but the assets themselves.

The United States was pushing in a different direction. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was working to convince fellow G7 nations to back a larger loan to Ukraine—potentially worth up to $50 billion—using frozen Russian assets as collateral. The logic was straightforward: Russia's money, seized and held abroad, could underwrite the weapons and equipment Ukraine needed to survive.

On the Russian side, fractures were beginning to show. Vladimir Putin ordered military drills simulating the use of tactical nuclear weapons, a move that came after French President Emmanuel Macron suggested the possibility of European troops entering Ukraine and British Foreign Secretary David Cameron stated that Ukraine had the right to strike targets inside Russia with British-supplied weapons. The drills were a message, a show of force in response to perceived escalation. Separately, Ivan Popov, the former commander of Russia's 58th Army and a figure known by the call sign "Spartacus," was arrested on suspicion of large-scale fraud. Popov had been vocal about the deaths of Russian soldiers under his command, a criticism that had apparently made him a liability to his superiors.

Back in Ukraine, the military was drawing from an unexpected source. More than 3,000 inmates had applied to join the armed forces under a new law allowing prisoners to enlist. The deputy minister of justice noted that 20,000 prisoners had been identified as eligible, though only those with less than three years remaining on their sentences could apply. Those convicted of sexual violence, multiple murders, serious corruption, or high-ranking officials were barred from service. It was a measure of how thoroughly the war had mobilized Ukrainian society—even the prison system was being tapped for manpower.