Russia assured on Monday that it had advanced in three days by 3 kilometers towards Kupiansk, in the north-east of Ukraine, an area taken over last September by Ukrainian forces and which has been facing a Russian offensive for several weeks. “Over the past three days, Russian soldiers have made an advance in this direction to a depth of more than three kilometers on an 11-kilometre-long stretch of the front,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in its daily bulletin. .
According to the same source, this is the area between the villages of Vilchana and Perchotravnevé, northeast of Kupiansk, a city which had 26,000 to 28,000 inhabitants before the conflict.
Ukraine had acknowledged in mid-July that it was in a “defense position” in the Kupyansk region, the Russian army having launched an offensive there. Since then, Moscow has ensured that it is nibbling on the ground. Kiev forces began a massive counter-offensive in June to try to retake the eastern and southern territories occupied by the Russian army.
Progress so far, however, has been quite limited, with Russia having built strong lines of defense, made up of trenches, anti-tank booby traps and minefields. The Kupiansk area and most of the Kharkiv region were recaptured from the Russian army last September after a surprise offensive by Ukrainian forces. Today it is one of the rare stretches of the front where Russia is on the offensive.