Moscow [Russia], September 4: On September 3, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that its army had taken control of "about 50%" of the city of Kupiansk in Kharkiv province, northeastern Ukraine, but the Kyiv government denied this information.
Kupiansk has long been the focus of increased military activity and fierce fighting on both sides. Russian forces controlled the city in the first weeks of the war, before Ukrainian forces retook it in late 2022.
Much of the city now lies in ruins, as Moscow's army seeks to regain control of it as part of a slow-moving westward advance along a frontline stretching more than 1,000km.
The Russian Defense Ministry released drone footage showing a soldier holding a Russian flag standing on a city street, according to TASS.
However, Ukraine's 10th Army Corps denied on Telegram that Russia had any control over the area, and asserted that the video was just a staged propaganda product.
"All such plots lead nowhere," Ukraine's 10th Army said alongside its video clip, which showed a Russian unit being attacked.
The Anti-Disinformation Center, an official Ukrainian agency, also spoke out, affirming that any claims by Russia about having entered Kupiansk are completely false and just propaganda.
Deepstate, a Ukrainian war blog that uses open-source data to analyze war maps, said the raising of the Russian flag by Russian soldiers occurred on the southern edge of the city, an area that is still under undecided control.
In a report on the evening of September 3, the General Staff of the Ukrainian army said that armed clashes had occurred in the Kupiansk section.
The report also listed nearly 50 attacks launched by Russian forces in an attempt to break through Ukrainian defenses near Pokrovsk, one of the focal points of the Russian campaign in Donetsk.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
