Ukraine says it has stopped Putin’s forces advancing on key city in Kharkiv

Kyiv’s military say they have full control of Kupiansk, but admit Russian forces did briefly breach its outskirts

A self-propelled howitzer of Ukraine's 57th brigade fires in the direction of Russian positions on the outskirts of Kupiansk (Reuters)

Ukraine says it has full control of a key city in the northeast of the country, after Russian troops – some disguised as Ukrainian soldiers – were said to have briefly breach its outskirts.

The Ukrainian military’s general staff wrote on the Telegram messenger app that the “alleged presence of Russian troops in the city of Kupiansk is not true”.

The comments came after it was reported that Russian troops had, in fact, entered the city in the Kharkiv region on Wednesday for the first time since they fled in September 2022. The city is an important railway hub with a pre-war population of 26,000.

The city, now just 1.5 miles from the front line, has been under constant shelling and the population has dwindled to just 3,000 people, who have been urged to evacuate, the head of the Kupyansk City Military Administration, Andriy Besedin, told Reuters.

Russian troops took the city in the early days of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 but were pushed out during a sweeping Ukrainian counteroffensive seven months later, which is still regarded as one of Kyiv’s greatest military successes of the nearly three-year conflict.

Elderly women receive their possessions after being evacuated from Kupiansk, at a distribution center for internally displaced persons, in Kharkiv, Ukraine (AP)

On Wednesday, Moscow’s forces, including soldiers disguised as Ukrainian troops, attacked in four waves but were repelled from the city, Ukraine’s general staff said.

“They partially entered the suburbs, the industrial zone, and were destroyed by our troops,” Mr Besedin said.

“There were assault actions using heavy armoured vehicles, there were attempts to bring in infantry.”

A map updated daily by Ukrainian war monitor DeepState, known to have close ties to the defence ministry, appears to corroborate these claims.

It shows the entire city under Ukrainian control with Russian forces pushing towards its northern outskirts.

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

Ukraine’s outnumbered troops have been losing ground in the east for months, while trying to hold the line against what Kyiv says is a 50,000-strong force in Russia’s Kursk region nearby. 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 sprawling more-than-800-mile front, president Volodymyr Zelensky 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 were going to react to this by ramping up their attacks there.

Russian attacks in Kupiansk, as well as the counterattack in Kursk and sweeping advances in the eastern Donetsk region along multiple fronts, were already of significant concern to Ukraine and its backers.

But US president-elect Donald Trump’s comprehensive victory last week has brought into sharp relief the cost of territorial losses as his advisors confirmed the incoming leader is intent on ending the war, possibly by demanding a freeze of the frontline.

Michael Waltz, Mr Trump’s nominee for the White House’s national security advisor, told Voice of America after a meeting with the president-elect: “The president clearly expressed that he wishes to bring both sides to the negotiating table. He is focused on ending the war, not its continuation.”

But both Russian officials and Ukrainian lawmakers appear opposed to the idea of a frozen frontline.

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov described the prospect of a ceasefire as “even worse” than previous agreements in 2014 and 2015, which temporarily put a halt to fighting after Moscow’s initial invasion of Ukraine a decade ago.

Kira Rudik, meanwhile, a Ukrainian opposition leader, said if Ukraine stopped fighting, it would be overrun by Russia.

“If Ukraine stops fighting, there will be no Ukraine,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “If Russia stops fighting, there will be no war.”