Russian troops have moved closer to Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine. This has led to an increased call for civilians to flee and reflects the difficult choices both sides must make about where to send reinforcements along a front that stretches for hundreds of miles.
Kupiansk, a small town about 40 kilometers from the border with Russia, has been regularly shelled by Russian artillery for months. A 45-year-old civilian was killed on Tuesday when the meatpacking plant where he worked as a security guard was hit. officials said.
Already battered and largely depopulated, the Russian army has set its sights on Kupiansk, hoping to push Ukraine to defend the city by siphoning soldiers away from its own counter-offensive in the south and southeast.
Ukrainian commanders, in turn, hope that the slow gains they are making in that counter-offensive will force the Russians to redeploy their forces from Kupiansk to those battlefields.
The Russians have advanced to within a few miles of the city and on Friday the top Ukrainian general in the East publicly called for more reinforcements to stop them.
“The Russians seem to be making some progress” around Kupiansk, Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov acknowledged at a press conference on Monday.
Ukrainian officials have been saying for months that civilians should evacuate the area, and in early August they declared a mandatory evacuation for 11,000 people who were near the front lines in the Kupiansk district.
But most of those residents appear to have defied the order. According to Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the regional military administration, only about 1,400 people, including 343 children, have left.
“We continue to work on the evacuation of the civilian population from dangerous areas of the Kupiansk district,” Mr. Syniehubov said in a message on the Telegram messaging app on Monday.
Kupiansk fell to Moscow’s forces shortly after the February 2022 invasion, and they used it as a logistical hub until it was recaptured by the Ukrainians last September, when they drove the Russians out of most of the northeast. Since then, Moscow troops have bombarded Kupiansk with artillery, preventing any return to any semblance of normal life.
Many residents fled the invasion last year. Some have returned to find neighborhoods in ruins. As in the long, bloody battles they fought to take control of Mariupol and Bakhmut, the Russian forces have shown their willingness to flatten a city in order to take it.
Still, some of those left behind in Kupiansk say they don’t want to leave their lifelong homes. Many are elderly and in poor health, and fear economic uncertainty if they move.
“I don’t know what to do if I’m evacuated,” said Oleksandr Shapoval, 63, who lives in an area of western Kupiansk relatively spared by the shelling. “Here we have a small house, we have a small vegetable garden. We have something here.”
Mr Shapoval said over the phone that he was suffering from heart problems and high blood pressure. The shelling has intensified in recent weeks and “the Russians are coming,” he said. But he added that he thought the city would hold up and that he stayed to help the Ukrainian troops by cooking for them and doing their laundry.
“I don’t think Kupiansk will surrender,” Shapoval said.
Some Western officials have said Ukraine should concentrate all forces on the southern counter-offensive. But Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky has dismissed the criticism, saying Ukrainian forces would not be distracted from defending places like Kupiansk.
The British Ministry of Defence said Friday that “there is a realistic possibility that Russia will increase the intensity of its offensive efforts” in northeastern Ukraine. It added that Russian forces would likely try to advance west to the Oskil River, which runs north-south through Kupiansk. Russian forces could then use the river as a natural barrier against further Ukrainian attacks.
But recent reports from Western military analysts have suggested that the reverse could happen: that the Russian army could move troops from the east to the south to strengthen defenses there, which could ease the pressure on Kupiansk.
Since June, Ukraine has been on the offensive, trying to drive a wedge south into Russian-held territory, splitting and cutting Moscow’s supply lines. One Ukrainian attack has targeted the city of Melitopol and another on the city of Berdiansk, both in the Zaporizhia region, but both have only advanced a few kilometers despite extensive Russian defenses.
At the same time, the Ukrainians have made some gains to the west of those battles, in the Kherson region, and to the northeast, around Bakhmut, in the Donetsk region, which the Russians have held completely since May.
In the Donetsk region, Ukrainian officials said Russian bombing of a dozen villages on Tuesday had killed five civilians and wounded four. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the head of the regional military administration, posted several photos to Telegram showing destroyed houses and the ceiling of one house pierced by what appeared to be the skeleton of a cluster missile, a weapon that opens in the sky to drop bombs over a large area.
The authenticity of the images could not be independently verified.
Thomas Gibbons Neff And Dzvinka Pinchuk reporting contributed.
