Russia’s Gen. Valery Gerasimov in a formal and televised Thursday report to his boss President Vladimir Putin announced Kremlin forces had scored a major victory and captured the important Ukrainian city of Kupyansk – but the thing is, it didn’t happen.
“Units from Group of Forces West liberated the of city Kupyansk and are continuing the destruction of formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on the left bank of the Oskil River,” Gerasimov, the senior officer in the Russian military said, reading from a prepared statement.
Aired on all major Kremlin-controlled media, the Putin-Gerasimov meeting took place at an unspecified underground location described in official reports as “Headquarters Group of Forces West.”
Wearing a military uniform, Putin praised Gerasimov and his troops for badly damaging “the criminal Kyiv regime” with the defeat, and predicted Russian victory in Ukraine is inevitable. An important industrial town with a pre-war population of 27,000, Kupyansk was captured by invading Russian forces in February 2022 and liberated by Ukrainian forces in September 2022.
Since then, Kremlin forces have launched grinding offensives to re-capture the city in a bloody campaign which, according to Gerasimov, finally ended on Thursday. A Gerasimov staffer told Putin men from Russia’s 68th Motor Rifle Division “brought to an end the liberation of the city of Kupyansk.”
“That means, it’s over, it’s finished, it’s [Kupyansk] under our control completely?” Putin asked the briefer during the nationally televised broadcast.
“Yes Sir. Exactly so. The city is fully under our control,” the unidentified three-star general told the Russian dictator.
But the Ukrainian military, independent observation groups, numerous eyewitnesses on the ground and even some pro-Russia milbloggers sharply contradict the Kremlin claim.
Official Ukrainian sources on Friday were calling Russia’s “capture” of Kupyansk fake news easily refuted by the facts on the ground.
Ukraine’s Army General Staff (AGS) in a Friday statement flatly denied the Russian claim of conquest of the city, saying Ukraine’s hold on Kupyansk is solid. Fighting is in progress in some districts with the trend of combat strongly in Ukrainian forces’ favor, but nowhere are Russian forces in control of Kupyansk nor are they likely to be, that statement said.
“The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports that Kupyansk is under the control of the Ukrainian Defense Forces. Counter-sabotage operations and special operations to search for and destroy enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups that have infiltrated the city are continuing in the city and its environs.
“This latest informational lie from the Russian General Staff is aimed solely at concealing the critical losses of the Russian army, which is being driven into constant ‘cannon fodder’ assaults. The occupiers’ [Russian army] losses since the beginning of the year have exceeded 371,000,” the AGS statement said. Kyiv Post could not confirm that casualty estimate independently.
According to independent and Ukrainian army observers, groups of Russian infantry in late October infiltrated into Kupyansk from the north. The AFU countered by pushing assault troops into the town to hunt the Russians down.
Ukrainian daily situation reports in following weeks have chronicled grinding house-to-house fighting generally going in the favor of better-trained and organized Ukrainian strike teams pitted against less well-armed and trained groups of Russian infantry. On Tuesday an AFU spokesman claimed the counterattacks had cleared Russian forces from the eastern side of the city.
A Kyiv Post survey of Ukrainian Army General Staff reports, from Nov. 15-21, found that the AFU counted a total 29 Russian assaults in and around Kupyansk in the past week, all repelled.
A Friday statement by Ukraine’s central command group Joint Task Force said: “Having become hostages of their own lies, Russian leaders are forced to double down. In the city of Kupyansk, groups of Russians, dispersed in the northern districts of the city, number about 40 men who are still able to speak [i.e., are still alive]… Kupyansk is under the control of the Defense Forces of Ukraine.”
Content and statements published by Ukrainian combat units and civilian assistance teams in the Kupyansk sector likewise were sharply at odds with the Russian narrative that the city is fully under the control of organized units of Russian troops, supporting Kyiv’s charges that the Kremlin was faking the “Kupyansk victory.”
Unit statements and geolocated video published by Ukraine’s elite 8th Special Operations Regiment showed heavily armed operators using fire and movement and tossing grenades through windows to clear individual buildings in a central district of Kupyansk. No Russian troops were visible in that Wednesday published content.
Images published on Thursday by the civilian volunteer group XTraverse showed an emergency response crew evacuating elderly and infirm from a southern Kupyansk neighborhood. Video recorded empty streets, heavily damaged buildings and light small arms fire audible in the distance.
The Rubaka drone unit, 77th Air Assault Brigade showed Russian jeeps and civilian automobiles repainted for military use under FPV swarm attack, with multiple vehicles in flames near an anti-tank barbed-wire barrier reportedly in Kupyansk sector.
Other video placed on the unit news feed showed bomber drones dropping grenades on individual Russian soldiers and FPV drones chasing fleeing Russian infantrymen. About half of the engagements were shown to be at night. Ukrainian defenses are under pressure, but holding, and Russian attacks are being repelled with losses, a Tuesday Rubaka statement said.
Footage on Wednesday published by 1st Presidential Brigade “Bureviy” (Hurricane) – a public duties unit fighting as a mechanized infantry formation since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 – showed bomber and FPV drones attacking Russian soldiers riding motorcycles, and others on foot, in and around a trench network reportedly on Kupyansk’s outskirts. A statement from 1st Brigade’s parent unit, the 1st National Guard Corps, praised 1st Brigade for coordinated drone strikes stopping and turning back Russian attacks in the Kupyansk sector.
AFU spokesman Viktor Trehubov in official comments on Wednesday said that Ukrainian counterattacks were clearing Russian infantry groups still at large in Kupyansk and that the situation inside the city, though dangerous, was stable. Advancing Ukrainian forces have cut off pockets of Russian troops in the northern part of Kupyansk, leaving them only able to receive food, water and ammunition by drones, he said.
“Putin said that in the Kupyansk sector everyone [Ukrainian] is supposedly surrounded. This was not the case then, and it is not the case now,” Trehubov said. “Moreover, there is a tendency for the Russians to gradually lose control over the city, over the areas where they were before but now are losing strength. These are the northern areas [of the city], where they infiltrated and tried to gain a foothold, but their numbers have decreased seriously as a result of effective countermeasures [by counter-attacking Ukrainian assault troops]. It [combat in Kupyansk] cannot be called a [Ukrainian] victory yet. At the moment it is work in progress.”
Even pro-Kremlin milbloggers, on Friday, said the Putin-Gerasimov “victory” announced on Russian state television was some distance from reality.
“Gerasimov’s declaration about the total liberation of Kupyansk just isn’t true,” reported the blogger Severniy Kanal (50,000+ followers). “The claim by Gerasimov about total control of Kupyansk isn’t accompanied by any proof,” the popular (1.26 million followers) Dva Mayora pointed out in a write-up of the Kupyansk announcement.
The Ukrainian milblogger Roman Shrayk (95,000+ followers) was more brutal: “Years will pass, and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, standing against a wall waiting to be shot, will remember those bygone days, when time after time he repeatedly captured Kupyansk.”
Russian forces since summer have increasingly avoided traditional combined arms assaults, instead attacking with small groups of unsupported soldiers advancing on foot in bad weather. Though costly in manpower the tactic takes advantage of thin Ukrainian frontline strength, and avoids devastating losses in tanks and other vehicles almost certain to be spotted and attacked by drones.
Kremlin troops in the southern Zaporizhzhia sector in early November captured 5 villages and took over about 50 square kilometers (19 square miles) of Ukrainian territory by advancing on foot into a sector lightly held by Ukrainian forces. A large-scale Russian attempt to employ the tactic around the town of Dobropillya in September and October was badly defeated after AFU command committed assault infantry units to clear the Russians out.