Ukraine's push against Russian troops in northeast puts pressure on Putin's war

Pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin mounted both on the battlefield and in the halls of global power as Ukrainian troops pushed their counteroffensive Saturday to advance farther into the country's partly recaptured northeast.

Western officials and analysts said Russian forces were apparently setting up a new defensive line in Ukraine's northeast after the counteroffensive punched through the previous one, allowing Kyiv's soldiers to recapture large swaths of land in the northeastern Kharkiv region that borders Russia.

Putin, at a high-level summit in Uzbekistan this week, vowed to press his attack on Ukraine despite recent military setbacks but also faced concerns voiced by India and China over the drawn-out conflict.

"I know that today's era is not of war," Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Russian leader in televised comments as they met Friday in Uzbekistan. "We discussed this with you on the phone several times, that democracy and dialogue touch the entire world."

At the same summit a day earlier, Putin acknowledged China's unspecified "questions and concerns" about the war in Ukraine while also thanking Chinese President Xi Jinping for his government's "balanced position" on the conflict.

The hurried retreat of his troops this month from parts of a northeast region they occupied early in the war, together with the rare public reservations expressed by key allies, underscored the challenges Putin faces on all fronts. Both China and India maintain strong ties with Russia and had sought to remain neutral on Ukraine.

Xi, in a statement released by his government, expressed support for Russia's "core interests" but also interest in working together to "inject stability" into world affairs. Modi said he wanted to discuss "how we can move forward on the path of peace," adding that the biggest concerns facing the world are the problems of food security, fuel security and fertilizers.

"We must find some way out and you too must contribute to that," Modi stressed in a rare public rebuke.

The comments cast a shadow over a summit that Putin had hoped would burnish his diplomatic status and show he was not so internationally isolated.

On the battlefield, Britain's defence ministry said the new front line likely is between the Oskil River and Svatove, some 150 kilometres southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city.

The new line emerged after the Ukrainian counteroffensive punched a hole through the war's previous front line, allowing Kyiv's soldiers to recapture large swaths of land in the northeastern Kharkiv region that borders Russia.

After the Russian troops retreated from the city of Izium, Ukrainian authorities discovered a mass grave site, one of the largest found so far.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that more than 440 graves at the location containing the bodies of hundreds of civilian adults and children, as well as soldiers, and that some had been tortured, shot or killed by artillery shelling. He cited evidence of atrocities, such as a body with a rope around its neck and broken arms.

"Torture was a widespread practice in the occupied territory. That's what the Nazis did. That's what [the Russians] do," Zelenskyy said Saturday in his nightly video address. "We will establish the identity of all those who tortured, who mocked, who brought this atrocity from Russia here to Ukrainian soil."