If Khotin falls, Russian troops will approach the city of Sumy.

While peace negotiations were taking place in Türkiye, the Russian Northern Army Group continued to advance towards Khoten - the last outpost of the city of Sumy.

The Russian Armed Forces (RFAF) are focusing their offensive in the northern part of Sumy Oblast. After overrunning the villages of Kondratovka and Novonikolaevka, fighting began in Varachino and Yablonovka. By the evening of June 2, it was reported that Varachino and Yablunivka were partially under the control of the RFAF. However, Ukrainian troops are still in these villages.

The RFAF’s capture of Yablunivka completed the encirclement of Yunakivka, where the Ukrainian Armed Forces (AFU) continued to hold out despite the RFAF’s “rain of bombs and bullets.” Yunakivka, although a border village, served as one of the AFU’s main military logistics centers in the Sumy region during the AFU’s occupation of Russia’s Kursk region.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian media are sounding the alarm, as the RFAF Northern Group is advancing deeper into Sumy province. Ukraine's Deep State channel said that the situation in the Sumy region is becoming increasingly serious for the AFU, as the RFAF has taken control of the village of Oleksiivka (known in Russia as Alekseyevka) and continues to overrun neighboring Alexandria. At the same time, it is attacking Myropillya, from the Guevo bridgehead.

On the Russian side, some observers expressed skepticism about such statements, saying that it was too early to report on this. But when the Russian Ministry of Defense officially announced that the RFAF Northern Group had taken control of the village of Vodolahy and continued to advance south of the border of Ukraine's Sumy Oblast. Currently, the area of ​​Sumy controlled by Russia is more than 70 square kilometers.

The Russian Rybar channel reported that paratroopers and motorized infantrymen of the RFAF Northern Group continue to clear the remnants of the Ukrainian army in the border forests and are attacking the village of Yunakivka. Information from the Sumy region clearly shows that the defense system built by the AFU here over the past three years has been broken not only in Yunakivka along the N-07 road, but also in the area of ​​​​another route to the city of Sumy, namely the T-19-01 axis (highlighted in red on the map).

According to updates from several Telegram channels, including soldiers from both sides directly involved in the battle, by the evening of June 1, the Russian army had completely taken control of the village of Kindrativka and had crossed the Sinyak River. Here, in the Zolotarevsky Reserve, there is a dam and a reservoir, which the AFU could rely on to prevent the RFAF from advancing to the town of Khotin.

With the AFU losing control of the village of Kindrativka, they lost their forward shield with the town of Khotin; according to Ukrainian media, Khotin, with a population of just under 4,000 before the war broke out here, was effectively the last outpost to defend the city of Sumy.

The defensive line north of Sumy city, there are very few villages or industrial areas, or factories that can be turned into defensive fortresses, to be able to hold back the RFAF; notably, north of Sumy there is the village of Stetskovka with about 3 thousand inhabitants, but it is not capable of organizing a complete "fortress".

In such a situation, the Sumy regional government announced the evacuation of 11 villages, mainly located along the R-44 Glukhov-Sumy highway and the Kryga River. Thus, the center of defense north of the city of Sumy, if the Khotin defense line is breached, is Stetskivka. Currently, the AFU is building a backup defense line here.

To prevent the Russian army from advancing along the R-44 highway into Sumy, the 425th Infantry Brigade and several other units of the AFU are also organizing a cross-border attack on the border village of Tetkino, in the Glushkovsky district of Russia's Kursk province.

It seemed that the AFU General Staff was determined to capture the village of Tetkino at all costs; the village of Tetkino had great tactical value, as it was surrounded by the Volfa and Vedma rivers. If the AFU controlled this part of Russia, they could defend the city of Sumy from the northwest.

All this indicates that the RFAF Northern Group will advance towards Sumy from multiple attack directions. Moreover, according to the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), 125 thousand RFAF mobile troops are currently concentrated in northern Ukraine, while the AFU has only limited resources in this area.

AFU Commander-in-Chief General Syrsky announced that the AFU counteroffensive will be concentrated in the Zaporizhzhya direction, which is considered by the Kiev expert community as an “anti-crisis” operation, in case the Russian troops break through to Sumy.

In order to urgently reinforce the Sumy front, the AFU has now mobilized even under-trained troops to this front; among them are the 78th Airborne Assault Brigade and the 103rd Mechanized Infantry Brigade.

Currently, RFAF armed UAVs, FPV UAVs and missiles are actively hunting for AFU FPV UAV control sites in Sumy. As soon as the coordinates of the UAV control sites are detected by electronic reconnaissance or aerial reconnaissance systems, UMPK guided glide bombs or guided missiles will immediately appear.

Telegram channel RaZved_DoZor reported a missile attack on the UAV control position of the 47th Magura Motorized Infantry Brigade of the AFU in Pavlovka, Sumy Oblast; in which the UAV operators, all female servicemen, led by Captain Valkyrie, were destroyed by Russian missiles.

In its June 2nd bulletin, ISW continued to provide “ambiguous” information, when on one hand, ISW claimed that the RFAF had approached the city of Sumy at a distance within the operational artillery range. But in another piece of information, they claimed that the RFAF Northern Group was still about 35 km from the city of Sumy.

In fact, based on geolocated video footage, the estimated distance from the RFAF’s forward units to the city of Sumy is about 18 km; that is, all three defense lines built by the AFU on the Sumy border have been breached. Now the battles will take place in densely populated areas, but that does not mean that the RFAF can advance like a “splitting bamboo” here. (photo source Military Review, Rvvoenkory, Ukrinform).

Source: https://khoahocdoisong.vn/neu-khotin-that-thu-quan-nga-se-ap-sat-thanh-pho-sumy-post1545394.html