\n<\/p>\n
Ukraine says it has retaken parts of Kupiansk, a town in the northern region of Kharkiv, which Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized on November 21.<\/p>\n
On Friday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Kupiansk and hailed the defending troops, a Ukrainian commander said Russian forces in the city had been completely surrounded.<\/p>\n
list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cToday, we can say that the Russians in the city are completely cut off. For a long time, they couldn\u2019t understand what was happening. But now they know they are surrounded,\u201d said Ihor Obolienskyi, head of the Khartiia Corps of the National Guard, as quoted by the Ukrainska Pravda news outlet.<\/p>\n The battlefield unit said it had liberated northern districts of the town.<\/p>\n Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy self-records a video in front of a sign that reads \u2018Kupiansk\u2019 in the front-line town in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on December 12, 2025 [Ukrainian Presidential Press Service\/Handout via Reuters]<\/p>\n Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Kupiansk had been \u201cpractically in the hands of Russian forces\u201d on November 4.<\/p>\n \u201cOur guys, so to speak, were finishing mopping up isolated neighbourhoods and streets. The city\u2019s future had already been determined at that point,\u201d Putin told his National Security Council.<\/p>\n \u201cThe volume of Russian lies far exceeds the actual pace of Russian troop advances,\u201d Oleksandr Syrskii, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief, wrote on the Telegram messaging service. \u201cThe enemy uses disinformation and fake maps in a hybrid war against Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n (Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n Meanwhile,\u00a0Ukraine has continued to fight in its contested eastern city of Pokrovsk this week, despite Russian claims to have seized it entirely.<\/p>\n \u201cThe defence of Pokrovsk continues, our troops control almost 13 square kilometres [five square miles] in the northern part of the city,\u201d Syrskii said on Tuesday, calling it an \u201cextremely difficult phase\u201d of the fight.<\/p>\n Geolocated footage showing Russian drones striking there on Wednesday confirmed the presence of Ukrainian troops.<\/p>\n Russia had claimed complete control over Pokrovsk on December 2.<\/p>\n Syrskii later explained that Ukrainian forces had tactically retreated from Pokrovsk, but fought their way back in.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a certain stage in the autumn, there were no more of our troops in Pokrovsk due to limited capabilities,\u201d he told Ukrainian media executives on Wednesday.<\/p>\n He also said Ukrainian forces held 54sq km (21 square miles) west of the city.<\/p>\n Ukrainian forces were also resisting Russian advances in Myrnohrad, east of Pokrovsk, Syrskii said.<\/p>\n The two cities are almost surrounded by Russian forces, with supply lines and evacuation routes running only through a narrow neck to the west.<\/p>\n The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said their troops were still repelling attacks in Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad on Thursday, as well as in outlying villages near the two towns.<\/p>\n (Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n Russian narratives were part of a campaign to force Ukraine to sign a peace agreement that United States President Donald Trump presented last month, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.<\/p>\n That plan demands that Ukraine hand over Pokrovsk and the rest of a \u201cfortress belt\u201d of cities in the eastern Donetsk region. Ukraine invested an estimated billion dollars last year to defend the region.<\/p>\n \u201cISW continues to assess that the Russian campaign to militarily seize the rest of Donetsk Oblast, including Ukraine\u2019s heavily fortified Fortress Belt, would likely take at least two-to-three years, pose a significant challenge, and result in difficult and costly battles that the Russian Federation may not be able to sustain,\u201d the ISW wrote.<\/p>\n (Al Jazeera)<\/p>\n Zelenskyy said Ukraine had not agreed to any territorial concessions demanded in the original plan, and was continuing to negotiate the proposal, though many observers believed it was a dead end.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think the current US-managed Ukraine peace process is serious,\u201d wrote Oxford historian Timothy Garton Ash on his Substack newsletter. \u201cTrump wants the quick win, in effect. He is not really bothered to understand the core drivers of the conflict.\u201d<\/p>\n Putin repeated on December 9 that Russia\u2019s wartime goals had not changed, including the seizure of Donetsk, casting doubt on whether Moscow was serious about negotiating.<\/p>\n Despite highly publicised seizures of villages and rural terrain, Russia\u2019s progress has been slow for the past two years of the war, figures show.<\/p>\n Last year it seized 4,168sq km (1,609sq miles), equivalent to 0.69 percent of Ukraine. So far this year, the ISW estimated it has seized 4,669sq km (1,802sq miles), or 0.77 percent of Ukraine. During that time, Russia has suffered an estimated 820,000 casualties.<\/p>\n Ukrainian servicemen prepare targets with images depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin during shooting practice between combat missions in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on December 10, 2025 [Sofia Gatilova\/Reuters]<\/p>\n Russian Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov this week said Russian manufacturing, construction, agriculture and services faced a shortage of 2.3 million workers.<\/p>\n After weathering the first three years of war well, the Russian economy slowed down in 2025 and its treasury, central bank and energy corporations are running out of cash, leading to cuts in defence spending.<\/p>\n The European Union aimed to deal Russia another economic blow on Friday, freezing 210bn euros ($246bn) in immobilised Russian assets indefinitely rather than in rolling six-month periods, in a step towards using the cash to finance Ukraine\u2019s war effort.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops, though outgunned, have not lost their will to fight, according to the testimony of a Russian assault company commander, identified as Vladimir, in a Telegram post published by Russia\u2019s Defence Ministry.<\/p>\n The ministry said he led the seizure of the village of Rovnoye in Donetsk.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most difficult was the last fight when we were mopping up two-storey buildings,\u201d he told Russian Defence Ministry officials. \u201cThe enemy didn\u2019t give up. The offer to surrender was also refused. They held the position. The enemy was defeated. Somebody tried to escape. Those who managed to escape were neutralised by timely response of our fellows from a different position.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ukraine says it has retaken parts of Kupiansk, a town in the northern region of Kharkiv, which Russia\u2019s Ministry of Defence claimed to have seized on November 21. On Friday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Kupiansk and hailed the defending troops, a Ukrainian commander said Russian forces in the city had been completely surrounded. Recommended<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37089,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[8365,1632,304,4441,20579,150,672,2722,3302,261],"class_list":{"0":"post-37088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-commander","9":"tag-completely","10":"tag-cut","11":"tag-forces","12":"tag-kupiansk","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-russian","15":"tag-russiaukraine","16":"tag-ukrainian","17":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}