Kupiansk clearance from occupiers continues as Russian soldiers hide in basements – Khartiia Unmanned Systems Platoon Commander Butusov
Yurii Butusov, Unmanned Systems Platoon Commander of the Khartiia brigade, spoke about operations in Kupiansk.
He reported about this on Facebook, Censor.NET reports.
Details
"On Christmas, we were operating in Kupiansk. Ukrainian soldiers are clearing house by house despite fierce enemy resistance. Putin and Gerasimov, who claimed the city had been taken, are nowhere to be seen. Putin said he would invite foreign journalists to Kupiansk, but he lied about that too; even Russian generals and Z-bloggers are afraid to come here," he said.
According to Butusov, Russian troops are hiding in basements and do not move openly around the city.
"There is hard, painstaking work underway to track them down and eliminate them. Russian drones are constantly in the air, so movement is only possible from shelter to shelter at moments when the drones move away," he added.
Fighters of the "Khartiia" brigade continue to operate actively in their sector.
Butusov also singled out the "Reconnaissance-Strike Group (RSG)" assault battalion of foreign volunteers, commanded by Captain Hamlet Avahian. He said Russia’s 6th Army is trying to rescue encircled units in Kupiansk by attempting to carve out a ground corridor, but the attacks are repelled daily with significant enemy losses.
Background
- On November 20, Russian media circulated a statement by Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, claiming Kupiansk had been captured.
- However, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine refuted Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov’s claim, made in a report to Putin, that the settlements of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region and Yampil in the Donetsk region had been captured.
- After that, Russian propaganda resources also admitted that the "capture" of Kupiansk by the Russian army was not true.
- On 12 December, the DeepState project reported that the north-western outskirts of the city had been cleared of Russian forces and that the occupiers in Kupiansk had been blocked.
- On the same day, 12 December, President Zelenskyy visited Kupiansk.
