From Russia’s intensive ground attack in Ukraine to Putin’s cabinet reshuffle: Here are the top developments

📌 On Monday, Russia continued its ground assault into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. They attacked new areas with small groups in an attempt to widen the front and stretch Ukraine’s forces said the Russian regional governor. Moscow’s troops entered Ukraine near its second city, Kharkiv, on Friday, opening a new, northeastern front in a war that has for almost two years been largely fought in the east and south. Russia said on Sunday it had captured nine villages in the Kharkiv region. “The enemy is trying to deliberately stretch it (the front line), attacking in small groups, but in new directions, so to speak,” Ukraine Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in televised comments.

📌 Ukraine on Monday said that it disposed of a Russian operation to set off a series of bomb attacks in builder’s markets near a cafe in the capital of Kyiv and at a defence enterprise in the western city of Lviv. According to the Reuters report, two Russian military agents were detained on suspicion of involvement in the attack and 19 explosive devices were recovered from the agents, Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office wrote on the Telegram app.  The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement that four bombs had been intended for detonation in the capital on May 9, the day when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. “According to the plan of the Russian special service, the explosives were supposed to detonate during the supermarkets’ peak hours to cause maximum damage to the civilian population,” the agency said on Telegram.

📌 According to the Guardian report, four people were killed in the eastern Lugansk region of Ukraine on Monday by strikes in Moscow and a Russian border region said the local officials. The Ukrainian commander responsible for the northeastern Kharkiv frontline was replaced during the war, a military command said.

 📌 The Ukrainian military said on Monday it had stopped Russian forces from moving further near the village of Lukyantsi to the north in the Kharkiv region where they had a “partial success”. The general staff said on Telegram that Russian troops continued offensive actions, and Ukraine would proceed with building up its forces in the area depending on the situation.

📌  Ukrainian troops are locked in intense battles with the advancing Russian army in two border areas, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. Zelenskyy said “fierce battles” are taking place near the border in eastern and northeastern Ukraine as outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian soldiers try to hold back a significant Russian ground offensive.“Defensive battles are ongoing, fierce battles, on a large part of our border area,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly video posted on Sunday. Meanwhile, a usually well-military correspondent for Russia’s state TV corporation VGTRK, said in a recent Telegram post that the Kharkiv assault marked the beginning of “a new phase”. “We’re pushing the enemy back from the border, destroying the enemy in order to deprive the Kyiv regime of the opportunity to use relatively cheap rockets to attack Belgorod,” he added, AP reported.

📌  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday replaced Sergei Shoigu as defence minister in a Cabinet shakeup that comes as he begins his fifth term in office. The appointment was announced shortly after Putin proposed Andrei Belousov to become the country’s defence minister in place of Shoigu. The announcement of Shoigu’s new role came as 13 people were reported dead and 20 more wounded in Russia’s border city of Belgorod, where a 10-story apartment building partially collapsed after what Russian officials said was Ukrainian shelling. Ukraine hasn’t commented on the incident.  Putin has proposed a new defence minister, nominating civilian Andrei Belousov, a former deputy prime minister who specialises in economics, for the job more than two years into the Ukraine war, the Kremlin said.

– With inputs from agencies