Russian attack on Ukraine’s Kupiansk steps up pressure on northeast front

By Yuliia Dysa and Tom Balmforth

KYIV (Reuters) -A small Russian assault group briefly broke through to the outskirts of Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kupiansk for the first time since Moscow’s forces fled in September 2022, officials said, in a sign of mounting pressure on the outpost.

Moscow’s forces, including soldiers disguised as Ukrainian troops, attacked in four waves on Wednesday, but were repelled from the city, an important railway hub with a pre-war population of 26,000, Ukraine’s general staff said.

“They partially entered the suburbs, the industrial zone, and were destroyed by our troops… There were assault actions using heavy armoured vehicles, there were attempts to bring in infantry,” the city’s military administration chief said.

The city, now just 2.5 km (1.5 miles) from the front line, was under constant shelling and the population has dwindled to 3,000 people who were being urged to evacuate, the official, Andriy Besedin, told Reuters by phone.

Kupiansk was captured by Russian forces in the early days of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion and then retaken by Ukraine in a counteroffensive months later.

Russia’s military has not commented on the Kupiansk front, but Vitaly Ganchev, a Russian official, said Moscow’s forces were gaining a foothold on the city’s outskirts.

Reuters could not independently verify the battlefield accounts.

Ukraine’s outnumbered troops have been losing ground in the east for months, while trying to hold the line in Russia’s Kursk region against what Ukrainian authorities say is a 50,000-strong Russian force there. Ukraine says Russia also plans to launch a push in the southeast soon.

The Kupiansk thrust, involving 15 pieces of hardware such as tanks and armoured combat vehicles, according to Ukraine’s general staff, was an attempt to expand offensive operations on a front that sprawls over more than 1,000 km (620 miles), President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said.

The Russian attack looked opportunistic and Kyiv appeared to have isolated and destroyed most of the Russian forces that penetrated the outskirts of Kupiansk, Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Black Bird Group, said.

“However, a penetration like that certainly signals confusion and weakness in Ukrainian defences in that area, which could prompt the local Russian commanders to increase their efforts to squeeze or cut off the Ukrainian salient,” he added.

He said the coming days would likely indicate whether the Kremlin was going to react to this by ramping up Russian attacks there.

POSITIONING FOR ANY TALKS

Ukrainian forces, some of whom have been fighting since before the full-scale invasion in 2022, are outnumbered by Russia’s troops, which Kyiv says have been taking heavy losses while making advances.

Oleksandr Kovalenko, a Ukrainian military analyst, said Russia was likely hoping to eject Ukraine from the swathe of land it carved out in the Kursk region in time for the Jan. 20 inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Trump, a Republican, has vowed to quickly end the war, without saying how. This has created speculation about looming negotiations, in turn giving Ukraine and Russia an incentive to try to improve their battlefield positions as much as they can.

With that in mind, Kovalenko said he believed Russia could step up operations on the southeast front which has for months seen much less combat than other places, though he said it lacked the resources to threaten the city of Zaporizhzhia.

Ukraine’s military says Russia has in recent days transferred some assault groups to forward positions in the Zaporizhzhia region after conducting active reconnaissance there. Moscow’s troops have also stepped up attacks in the area where the southeastern Zaporizhzhia and eastern Donetsk regions meet, it says.

“They have the resources to become more active on the front line and seize a certain amount of square kilometres and imitate future advances to compel their antagonists to agree to Moscow’s conditions,” Kovalenko said.

(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa and Anastasiia MalenkoWriting by Tom BalmforthEditing by Alison Williams, Christina Fincher, Alex Richardson and Frances Kerry)