Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky postponed all his foreign trips as the battlefield situation continued to deteriorate on Wednesday and Kyiv said fighting raged in the northeastern border town of Vovchansk in Kharkiv region.
The capture of the town 5 kilometres from the border would be Russia's most significant gain since it launched an incursion into the Kharkiv region on Friday, opening a new front and forcing Kyiv to rush in reinforcements.
The assault keeps Ukraine's stretched and depleted forces off balance ahead of what Zelensky has said could be a big Russian offensive in the coming weeks. Moscow has been slowly making ground in the east for months.
"The situation is extremely difficult. The enemy is taking positions on the streets of the town of Vovchansk," Oleksiy Kharkivskiy, Vovchansk's patrol police chief, said on Facebook.
Dmytro Lazutkin, a spokesman for the defence ministry, said "some" Russian infantry groups had entered the town, which military analysts reckon Moscow needs to capture to continue its offensive thrust deeper into the region.
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Ukrainian troops later managed to "partially" push the Russian forces back from the town, the general staff said, but "defensive actions" continued in the north and northwestern outskirts.
Kyiv's forces were trying to prevent Russia from building up troops and military hardware in Vovchansk's north, the military added.
Russia's defence ministry said on Wednesday its forces captured two more settlements in the region - Hlyboke and Lukyantsi, both about 25 kilometres from Kharkiv's outskirts.
Ukraine late on Tuesday pulled back to new positions in the Vovchansk and Lukyantsi areas due to "a consequence of enemy fire and storming action".
Police remained in Vovchansk and were continuing to evacuate people, Kharkivskiy said. Nearly 8,000 people have been evacuated from Vovchansk and border areas since Friday's assault.
No foreign travel
President Zelensky has postponed all his foreign travel planned for coming days, his spokesman Sergiy Nykyforov said, after the Ukrainian leader held a daily conference call with senior military figures to discuss the situation in Kharkiv region and the supply of weapons.
Ukraine is trying to snuff out the assault in the Kharkiv region, while holding the line against Moscow's main thrust in the eastern Donbas region and guarding against potential new border incursions.
Ukraine's top military spy has warned that Russia had small groups of forces located to the north of Kharkiv region along the Sumy region.
Kyiv says the Russian assault into the northeast does not present an imminent threat to the region's city of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest, that is home to 1.3 million people.
Ukraine's shortage of troops is compounded by months of delayed weapons deliveries, in particular from the United States where Congress took six months to approve a major aid package.
The deteriorating situation in Kharkiv region coincided with a visit to Kyiv by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken who said some of the US aid had arrived and that more was on the way. That, he said, would "make a real difference".
"I know this is a really, really difficult time. Your soldiers, your citizens, particularly in the northeast in Kharkiv, are suffering tremendously," he said.
"But they need to know, you need to know, the United States is with you, so much of the world is with you. And they're fighting not just for a free Ukraine but for the free world, and the free world is with you too."
Troops pulled back
Ukraine said it pulled back troops near several villages in the northeastern Kharkiv region, where Russian forces have been advancing and pounding settlements along the border.
"In certain spots in Lukyantsi and Vovchansk areas, due to the fire impact and assault actions of the enemy, manoeuvres were carried out in order to save the lives of our soldiers, units were removed to advantageous positions," a military spokesman said on state television.
Authorities in Vovchansk said there was intense street-to-street fighting in the border town that before the war had an estimated population of 20,000 people.
"We are here and are evacuating people and helping them. The situation in Vovchansk is extremely difficult," police chief Oleksiy Kharkivsky said on social media.
Throughout the two-year war, both sides have typically used the language of moving to more "advantageous positions" to signify retreats.
The two villages - around 30km apart - are close to the border with Russia and have been targeted in the fresh offensive.
The Ukrainian military said the situation "remains difficult" but insisted that its forces were "not allowing the Russian occupiers to gain a foothold".
Kyiv has rushed reinforcements to the area to prevent Russia from punching through.
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State power operator Ukrenergo had announced a series of overnight and early morning power cuts to deal with "the cold weather amid the consequences of Russian shelling" that has destroyed swathes of Ukraine's generating facilities.
"Emergency shutdowns in Kyiv, the Kyiv region, the Odesa region, the Donetsk region and the Dnipropetrovsk region were lifted," DTEK, the country's largest private energy operator said.
Ukrainian officials have said that more than 30,000 Russian forces have been deployed to the northeastern region but that the regional hub, the country's second-largest city of Kharkiv, was not threatened by the offensive.
Ukraine also launched aerial attacks on Russia, forcing the closure of two airports in the region of Tatarstan some 1,000km inside Russian territory.
Russian aerial defence systems intercepted and destroyed 17 drones across several border areas, as well as 10 ATACMS missiles over the annexed Crimean peninsula, the defence ministry said.
Putin visits China
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in China today to meet his "dear friend" Xi Jinping as he seeks to win greater support from Beijing for his war effort in Ukraine and his isolated economy.
It will be Mr Putin's first trip abroad since his March re-election and his second in just over six months to China, an economic lifeline for Russia after the West hit it with unprecedented sanctions over its military offensive in Ukraine.
Mr Putin, in an interview published in China's Xinhua state news agency ahead of his two-day visit, hailed Beijing's "genuine desire" to help resolve the Ukraine crisis.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Xi in Beijing last month, warned China's support for Russia's "brutal war of aggression" in Ukraine had helped Russia ramp up production of rockets, drones and tanks - while stopping short of direct arms exports.
China claims to be a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict and the foreign ministry in Beijing said the two leaders will exchange views on "bilateral ties, cooperation in various fields, and international and regional issues of common interest".
