The Kharkiv Regional State Administration head, Oleh Synehubov, announced that in the Vovchansky district of the Kharkiv region, the Russian occupiers had landed 120 airborne soldiers. The local territorial defence and the Ukrainian Armed Force had defeated them.
"A Russian enemy landed an assault landing group using three helicopters. One hundred twenty people wanted to move towards the city of Kharkiv. However, our territorial defence and the Ground Forces units destroyed most of the landing on the spot. The rest fled to the Belgorod region, Russia," said Synehubov.
According to him, the Armed Forces of Ukraine entirely control the ground part of the city.
"There are no regular enemy troops in the city; there are no RSGs either. We quickly detect and eliminate individual saboteurs. For example, at 7 am today, we caught a female intelligence officer collecting data on military facilities," Synehubov said.
On 8 March, the mayor of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, said that he had received the offer from the Russian occupiers to hand over the city. Several other representatives of the Ukrainian authorities in the cities received such reports as well.
On Monday, 7 March, the shelling of Kharkiv by the Russian Federation killed ten civilians.