Ukraine Claims Victory: Two Settlements Reclaimed in Northeastern Kharkiv Region

On Friday, Ukraine announced that it had regained control of two settlements in the northern Kharkiv area and had successfully pushed back Russian forces in Kupiansk, a vital railway junction that Russia had claimed to capture the previous month.

«The villages of Kindrashivka and Radkivka, along with their surroundings, have been liberated, as well as several neighborhoods in northern Kupiansk,» the Khartia army corps reported via social media.

At the end of November, the Russian military asserted that it had recaptured Kupiansk, a city it first took in 2022 before Ukrainian forces regained it later that same year.

In recent months, Russia has promoted its military gains, while Ukrainian forces find themselves on the defensive.

Kyiv has consistently rejected Russia’s claims of significant progress, asserting that these statements are attempts to create a false narrative of Ukraine’s impending downfall to sway negotiations aimed at ending the conflict.

The U.S. is currently urging Ukraine to make significant territorial compromises as part of its strategy to conclude the nearly four-year-long war.

«Russians are far more adept at manipulating the information landscape than any of our allied partners, disseminating narratives that do not correspond with reality,» President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters, including those from AFP, on Thursday.

«We must counteract outright falsehoods,» he emphasized.

Russia has not announced any formal annexation of the Kharkiv region, where Kupiansk is situated. According to Zelensky, the most recent iteration of a proposed U.S. plan to resolve the conflict might involve a Russian withdrawal from these areas in exchange for Ukraine pulling back from the Donetsk region.