Nov 15, 2025
3 min read
The invading army has natural obstacles in this municipality of Kharkiv province, which help to resist Moscow's attack.
More soldiers, forest and river: this is how Ukraine stops Russia in coupes.
The country's military attacked physical obstacles in this city in the Kharkiv region that support resistance to powerful Moscow.
Hay dos ciudades del este de Ucrania en la que se están librando combates calle a calle. Son las dos conquistas actualmente más codiciadas por el ejército ruso: una es Pokrovsk, en la provincia de Donetsk, y la otra es Kupiansk, en la provincia de Járkov. Ambas son ubicaciones de gran importancia estratégica, pero si todo apunta a que Pokrovsk puede terminar en manos del invasor en el corto plazo, las tropas ucranias han conseguido por el momento en Kupiansk revertir una derrota que en verano se daba por segura.
Reinforcements arriving this summer, improved coordination between brigades, terrain advantages and the concentration of Russian forces above Pokrovsk allowed the ZSU to continue to resist the Kupyan Bastion.
By the exam of the order sign of magnet, the upper name of the Ukraine 151 Their Babus is a Bubusk in this place between the vapans.at a neighbor's house.Magnet wasted and asked the troops in the country to go to a secret to confirm the hide of the puppy.
Within two minutes, the Ukrainian Stormar Stormers stormed the basement.They quickly recognized that they were civilians and left the place safely.A group of neighbors will be there." Running against them is impossible, it will cause injuries to our men and each other," said the mainet.first test 26,000.The city has a special feature: it is the first major city that can be in the second term from Russia.He was taken over by the Russian authorities in February 2022, although he left the Ukrainian cereOfficie in September of that year.
The command center of the 151st battalion is located 25 kilometers from Kupijansk, that is, on the edge of the so-called "death zone", a distance from the front line where the danger is especially great due to the intense activity of enemy drones.An example of this is provided by four soldiers from the artillery brigade of the National Guard Corps with the Grad missile battery, about seven kilometers from the city.They say that if in May they could reach their position in a few hours, even without wearing a helmet and body armor, today it may take them days to be able to command the cities, waiting for the opportunity to avoid the flight of Russian drone bombers. "On the way to the position, we have 10 cars destroyed by drones," said one of them.
But the scene seen by EL PAÍS on November 6 on the screens of the 151st Battalion shows that the Ukrainian Armed Forces control the situation in the municipality, even if it is a gray zone, meaning that neither side dominates the terrain.Compared to last August and September, when the Russian advance in the urban area was sensational, the situation has improved for Ukrainian interests.Not only did they stop the invader inside Kupiansk: on November 7, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared that his men had pushed the invader back more than a kilometer into the outlying neighborhoods.
The new Russian infantry added to Kupiansk was not prepared for defense (the invader has been on the offensive for two years), points out Magnet.Moreover, in this region of the front, the enemy did not build the defensive fortifications that he built in Donetsk and in the south, in Zaporizhzhia, during the failed major Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023. That is why, says the commander of the 151st battalion, they can recover positions.
Akcent, the codename of the battalion commander of the 43rd Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine, confirms that with more troops, his army could move towards Kupyansk.
Another key to the well-being of the Ukrainian opposition, according to the evidence of the return of this newspaper, without Pokrovsk, is its primary nature.
The first thing that strikes you on the roads connecting Kharkiv, the provincial capital, with Kupiansk is the intense movement of armor, both infantry and tanks.The use of these vehicles in other areas of the front has been drastically reduced because they are easy prey for drones.But the western flank of Kupiansk, where Ukrainian troops are entering the municipality, is surrounded by large forest areas.Between the trees, more safely, soldiers with these armored vehicles rotate up to the first streets of the city.
The opposite is happening in Pokrovsk, where the access of the Ukrainian army to the city is so difficult that the auxiliary forces of the special units of the Ministry of Defense, which arrived on November 3, had to perform a near-suicide mission, with a helicopter.
He is not yet 30 years old and has fought like a storm in some of the most important battles of this war.He is an officer in the 15th Brigade of the National Guard, in Kupiansk, but he knows pokrovsk inside out, because he has been stationed there.He also has friends in this city, which is besieged by the Russians, who emphasize that the luck of Kupiansk is that it does not have as many resources as Pokrovsk.An important illustration of this, is the number of air bombs that Russia dropped on Ukrainian positions in two years, on the 20th of Russian An.
Private admits that the military "death rate is due to the lack of replacement and Russia, did not stop attacking the position of the plague.
Oskil River Dam
But the Russians in Kupiansk have another disadvantage, Magnet explains, because to bring their troops into the city, they have to cross the Oskil River, which surrounds the eastern side of Kupiansk."Every time they try to build a pontoon in the river, we destroy it, so the weapons and resources that their people get in the urban center are reduced. They can't even use drones. To transport their troops, only small unmanned land vehicles that carry a maximum load of eight kilos," says Magnet.
Accent maintains that Russia "has a big problem in their logistics line" and to balance the balance, since August they have focused 80% of their artillery fire and attack aircraft against the Ukrainian drone pilot base.
The Accent Battalion defends the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovy, south of Kupiansk.It is the main Ukrainian stronghold on the left bank of the Oskil, a key position to prevent the enemy from crossing the river.Kupiansk-Vuzlovii is also an important rail link to the Russian-occupied province of Lugansk.
This defeat would be a serious strategic setback for Ukraine if Kremlin forces drive the Ukrainians out of the region, ensuring control of Oskil, Accent and Magnet. This is because the aggressors will be able to resupply their troops by train, the Kharkov logistics route and the region and neighboring 30%.The last link between Donetsk, which is under the control of independent Ukraine. The colonel of the 43rd Brigade warned that the disaster would not only make it more difficult to one day retake Luhansk, but also provide a basis for future Russian advances towards Kharkov.
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