The sector is a rare bright spot for the Ukrainians as they reel in Kursk and Donetsk.
Nov 26, 2024
Ukrainian defense ministry capture
Ukrainian forces are under relentless assault in two critical sectors of Russia’s 33-month wider war on Ukraine.
In western Russia’s Kursk Oblast, currently the locus of the fighting, around 20,000 Ukrainian troops are struggling to hold back at least 50,000 Russians as well as thousands of North Koreans.
In southern Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, a few battalions of exhausted Ukrainian regulars—each with no more than 400 soldiers—are desperately trying to avoid encirclement by a division of Russian motor-rifle troops. The balance of forces in this sector might be five to one in favor of the Russians.
But in Kupiansk, a front-line city in Kharkiv Oblast in northeastern Ukraine, it’s the Ukrainians who may have the momentum. The Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group, which oversees the approximately 10 Ukrainian brigades in and around Kupiansk, claimed its troops pushed back Russian infiltrators on Tuesday.
Advancing under the cover of intensive bombardment, Russian assault groups—apparently from the 25th Motor Rifle Brigade—entered the city of 27,000 two weeks ago. But attacking is always more resource-intensive than defending, and whatever advantages in people and equipment the Russians had in the area weren’t enough to cement their gains in Kupiansk.
In what may be best described as a desperate Hail Mary, Russian troops attempted to flank Kupiansk’s defenders by crossing the Oskil River in boats. The Ukrainians defeated this maneuver, too.
It helps that the Khortytsia OSG still includes one experienced brigade that hasn’t been dismantled by Russian attacks or split up and dispersed by Ukrainian commanders desperate to reinforce Kursk and Donetsk. The 14th Mechanized Brigade “is one of the more skilled units of the Ukrainian ground forces,” explained Militaryland, a collective that tracks changes to the Ukrainian force structure.
The brigade rides in an eclectic mix of armored vehicles including modern Ukrainian-made T-84 Oplat tanks and even newer captured Russian T-72B3s. Tanks from the Ukrainian 4th National Guard Brigade—possibly up-armored 1970s-vintage T-72Bs—have also been active along the Kupiansk axis.
In one recent video circulated by the Ukrainian defense ministry, one of the Guard tanks engaged entrenched Russian troops at point-blank range, firing steadily with its 125-millimeter cannon as it slowly rolled away from the trench, its crew clearly counting on constant movement to complicate any return fire.
The liberation of Kupiansk is rare good news for Kyiv’s outnumbered and outgunned army as the winter sets in and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s January inauguration looms. Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine. His proposal to freeze the front line in place would cede to Russia more than 10 percent of Ukrainian territory.
The Russians aren’t giving up on Kupiansk. If they can’t fully capture the city, they mat settle for consolidating their positions along the Oskil River, which threads through Kupiansk and largely defines the front line in the area.
“Russian forces have intensified attacks, using artillery, [rocket launchers] and glide bombs,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies reported. According to CDS, the Russians’ goal is “to force the civilian population to evacuate from villages on the eastern bank of the Oskil River.”
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Sources:
1. Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group via WarTranslated
2. Deep State
3. Militaryland
5. Center for Defense Strategies