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Russia on Saturday said it had captured six villages in Ukraine’s east during a surprise ground offensive that prompted mass evacuations, as President Volodymyr Zelensky made an urgent call for military aid.

The Russian defence ministry said its troops had ‘liberated’ five villages in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region near the border with Russia — Borysivka, Ogirtseve, Pletenivka, Pylna and Strilecha — as ‘a result of offensive actions’.

The village of Keramik in the Donetsk region was also now under Russian control, it said.

Ukrainian officials said that the country’s forces were resisting but there was heavy fighting in the Kharkiv region near the border.

‘Fighting for villages... continues in the border area’, Ukrainian military spokesman Nazar Voloshyn said on national television, while ‘the enemy is currently localised’. 

There is ‘heavy fighting’ in the border area and 1,775 people have been evacuated, Kharkiv regional governor Oleg Synegubov wrote on social media.

He insisted there was ‘no threat of a ground operation’ for the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest.

At an arrival point for evacuees near Kharkiv, groups of people were arriving in vans and cars loaded with bags.

Evacuees—many of them elderly—received food and medical assistance in makeshift tents.

Ukrainian forces have multiplied attacks inside Russia and Russia-held areas of Ukraine, particularly on energy infrastructure.

On Saturday a missile strike hit a restaurant called Paradise in the city of Donetsk, eastern Ukraine.

The attack using US HIMARS precision rocket launchers killed three civilians—two diners and a restaurant member of staff—and wounded eight, the head of the region’s Russian-backed administration, Denis Pushilin, said.

Moscow-installed authorities in the Russian-occupied Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine said four people were killed by a Ukrainian strike with US-made missiles on an oil depot in Rovenky.

Governor Leonid Pasechnik said the strike ‘enveloped the oil depot in fire and damaged surrounding homes’.

In Russia, two people were reported killed by Ukrainian strikes in the Belgorod and Kursk regions.

Ukrainian officials also reported a total of six civilians killed in Russian shelling in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions over the past day.

Officials in Kyiv had warned for weeks that Moscow might try to attack its northeastern border regions, pressing its advantage as Ukraine struggles with delays in Western aid and manpower shortages.

Ukraine’s military said it had deployed more troops.

‘Reserve units have been deployed to strengthen the defence in these areas of the front,’ it said.

Military expert Olivier Kempf told AFP Saturday that Russia’s ground operation was most likely aimed at creating a buffer zone near its Belgorod region, recently raided by pro-Ukrainian units, or diverting Ukraine’s resources from the Donetsk region.

The United States on Friday announced a new $400 million military aid package for Kyiv as Russia launched a ground offensive in northeast Ukraine.

It is the third package for Ukraine in less than three weeks, following two in late April valued at a total of $7 billion as Washington seeks to make up for months in which it provided only limited assistance.

In a memo released by the White House, President Joe Biden authorized the provision of ‘up to $400 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training’ to aid Ukraine.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that the package contains ‘urgently needed capabilities’ including air defense munitions, artillery rounds, anti-tank weapons, armored vehicles and small arms ammunition.

‘The United States and the international coalition we have assembled will continue to stand with Ukraine in its defense of its freedom,’ Blinken said.

The package was announced on the same day that Russia upped the pressure on Kyiv with a ground offensive into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.

Officials in Kyiv had for weeks warned Moscow might try to attack its northeastern border regions, pressing its advantage as Ukraine struggles with delays in Western aid and manpower shortages.