Ukrainian infantry, commando, national guard and scout teams are advancing and have captured urban districts, Russian prisoners-of-war, and a key bridgehead to the east of the northeastern city of Kupyansk, a place Russian leader Vladimir Putin declared conquered decisively by Kremlin forces in November.
Ukrainian ground troops operating in the Kharkiv region city with a pre-war population of 27,000 have gained ground and cleared new districts of Kupyansk steadily over the past 72 hours against at times limited Russian resistance, Ukrainian official sources and military media said.
In a high-profile media event aired across Russia’s 11 time zones on the national broadcaster RT-1 on Nov. 20, a visibly pleased Putin wore a military uniform to receive a report that Ukrainian forces had, purportedly, been thrown out of the city by Russian forces. Independent media quickly confirmed that the official Kremlin claims were fake news.
Since then, effective Ukrainian assaults backed by concentrations of strike drone units have isolated Russian troops in the center of the city, wearing them down with casualties and food and ammunition shortages.
On Friday, Ukraine’s General Staff said combat within Kupyansk city limits had come to a near-halt and that the only serious fighting in the sector was some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) east in and around a village called Petropavlivka. The regional Ukrainian headquarters Joint Task Forces Command (JTFC) on Friday said its troops had advanced “to improve local positions,” and on Saturday reported Russian troops had been ejected from that village.
Russian milbloggers over the weekend reported a worsening situation in Petropavlivka village and the adjacent Kucherivka village. According to those sources, Ukrainian assaults had effectively eliminated the remains of two Russian infantry regiments that had been attempting to hold out there. The independent battle-tracking group DeepState on Monday showed those villages were under confirmed Ukrainian control.
The pro-Moscow milblogger Aleksandr Sladkov in a Monday report of fighting around Kupyansk, reported no combat within the city: “Kupyansk sector of the front. Fierce fighting continues near Kupyansk. The weather is challenging and unstable, and the opposing sides are taking advantage of this: the Ukrainian Armed Forces continue to deploy additional forces to populated areas.”
The US-headquartered Institute for the Studay of War (ISW) on Monday in a daily situation report generally confirmed reports of Ukrainian advances near Petropavlivka and parallel ground gains to the south, south-east and north of Kupyansk.
If held by Kyiv forces, the Petropavlivka-Kucherivka built up area would become an operationally important Ukrainian bridgehead across the Oskil River, and a major reverse for Russian forces, who have fought bloody battles for almost four years in an as-yet unsuccessful effort to gain full control of the Oskil River’s left bank in the Kharkiv region.
Viktor Tregubov, the JTFC official spokesperson, in Sunday comments on a national television news program said that Ukraine’s military believes that within Kupyansk city itself, around one hundred Russian soldiers are still at large and that cold and food and ammunition shortages had reduced most of them to ineffectiveness. Russian milbloggers have reported skies saturated with Ukrainian attack drones since December.
Graphic video and text content published on Saturday by the raiding group RUG under the command of the 2nd Corps National Guard “Khartiya” showed heavily armed Ukrainian infantrymen moving tactically through a snowy urban region geo-located to a central district of Kupyansk, against no return fire.
A male fire team with a female medic attached is shown to be clearing lower floors of a burnt-out, demolished apartment building and nearby garages. Other footage published on Jan. 4 shows drone strikes against individual Russian infantrymen clad in white camouflage smocks, a wounded Russian soldier attempting to stand up, and corpses.
Text and video published by Ukraine’s 77th Air Assault Brigade, a formation deployed to the northeast of Kupyansk, showed groups of Russian infantry of eight to 12 men coming under accurate artillery fire, at night in lightly-wooded terrain. Other images showed accurate drone hits on bunkers and soldiers, both individuals and in groups, described by the 77th as Russian.
A statement by the 77th Brigade’s parent unit, 7th Air Assault Corps, claimed at least 40 Russian soldiers were killed or seriously injured after reconnaissance drones discovered them exiting an unused natural gas pipeline near the village of Bohuslavka and operators called in shell strikes. An armored vehicle attack in the same sector was repelled with losses, that report said.
The video was geolocated to the battle site claimed by the Ukrainian military, but Kyiv Post wasn’t able to independently confirm the dates of the engagements.
Ukraine’s 127th Heavy Mechanized Brigade “Kharkiv” on Sunday published a report by a scout element describing a Cuban mercenary sent to fight as part of Russian forces deployed to the Kupyansk sector, and subsequently deciding that capture and surrender to Ukrainian forces was preferable.
The speaker, identifying himself in English as Jondi Delapaz, in a seven-minute video published by the 2nd Corps reconnaissance element Nord Division, said he had travelled to Moscow for work in early 2025, was unable to find permanent employment, and was arrested by police as an illegal migrant. He claimed he wanted to return to Cuba, but Russian law enforcers tricked him into signing a military contract and sent him to Kupyansk as a replacement in November. Delapaz complained about minimal food and said he surrendered after his team came under fire and he and a wounded Russian soldier decided to stop fighting.
In another mopping-up engagement reportedly taking place in the Kupyansk sector, commandos from Ukraine’s 8th Special Operations Regiment captured a Russian national sleeping in a bazaar storage room. The man dressed in a military uniform did not resist and told operators he had been forced into military service as an artillery observer and that he wanted peace between Ukraine and Russia.
The one-minute video published by Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) on Thursday showed the Ukrainians accusing the Russian in rough language of not telling the truth and wishing to harm Ukrainians. In a statement, SSO said the bazaar raid was launched following radio intercepts pointing toward a Russian artillery fire controller hiding somewhere on-site.
“Due to the dense urban buildings there are a large number of shelters and potential firing positions in which a ‘rat’ might hide, making detecting the enemy time-consuming and painstaking work,” the statement said in part.