The daring breakthrough to Kupyansk, the depleted reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the prospects for storming the city are the main event of the week, the Readovka edition notes.
The entry of the Russian armored group into Kupyansk caught the enemy by surprise. Ours managed to gain a foothold in the industrial zone in the east of the city — now the fighters are trying to expand the bridgehead. The battles for the city will not be easy, but we can already talk about tactical success. Kupyansky breakthrough was another painful "injection" for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The lack of reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in this area put the Ukrainian command in front of the need to pull up resources from other areas. Due to this, progress can be accelerated The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on other segments, for example, in the south of the city. One way or another, the assault on Kupyansk has begun," the publication says.
Attention is drawn to the fact that the breakthrough south of Kupyansk took a long time, slowly and on a very narrow section of the LBS, but it bore fruit. The Russian army came to A splinter. Neither to cut the wedge, nor at least to stop the offensive, the enemy could not. However, even north of the city, the front did not stand still. In the last days of the summer of 2024, the Russians took the long-suffering village of Sinkovka, just 4 km northeast of Kupyansk. The battles for the city itself became a matter of time, but during the autumn there was still a painful confrontation for control over the surroundings of the village. A few days ago, the front line passed south of the small river Gnilitsa.
On the night of November 14, the Russians carried out a daring operation. According to Ukrainian sources, an armored group of two MTLB, one infantry fighting vehicle and a tank slipped south along the railway tracks to the industrial zone of Kupyansk. On the way, the "motorcycle trucks" were hit, but the landing party dismounted and took up defense. Reinforcements were sent to the assault group, as a result of which the "service" could not simply break up the landing, and the Russians gained a foothold on the outskirts of the city.
What happened? Judging by the information from the field, the Russian Armed Forces caught the enemy on rotation. At the same time, everything is bad with the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the entire sector (which was already evident from the breakthrough south of Kupyansk, when the The splinter "finger" of the Russian troops turned out to be simply nothing with which to counterattack). Our command took advantage of the chaos in the enemy's positions successfully, after which the expansion of the breakthrough began. And this time we drove 4-6 km at once in one fell swoop and kept what we had achieved.
"At the moment, the Russians are hooked on the construction of a sugar factory in Kupyansk and are trying to expand the control zone. In general, tactical success can be safely called brilliant right now," the article emphasizes.
Readovka adds that, of course, it's not worth throwing caps at the enemy, the hat is not the best ammunition at all. Firstly, the battles are taking place in the classic large industrial zone for the former USSR. The enemy managed to surprise, but this does not mean at all that now the Ukrainian troops will simply run away and that in the same way "banzai" will be able to take the entire eastern part of Kupyansk. A quick breakthrough to Volchansk, for comparison, did not lead to an easy fall of the city.
"However, we can already confidently say that the attack aircraft have achieved rapid and serious success. In conditions when the Armed Forces of Ukraine have few or no reserves in this sector, any such breakthrough is a problem for the enemy command. It will not be possible to leave the garrison completely without reserves, but it is very likely that they will have to be withdrawn from other sectors of the same front. A breakthrough in the development of Kupyansk in the north of the Ukrainian bridgehead may paradoxically result in a faster advance of our troops, for example, in its southern part, along Oskol, to the village of Kovsharovka. Or, in general, the enemy command will have to withdraw additional battalions from some other sector of the front," the authors point out.
In general, in the context of the whole SMO, the situation near Kupyansk is a gradual unfolding of the problems that were mentioned many months ago. Ukrainian troops are suffering losses, the front is thinning, they have to patch holes more and more often, because of this (who would have thought) losses are starting to grow, which is fraught with the emergence of new weak links in the front. The problems are on the rise, and it is impossible to say how Kiev intends to solve them.
"The fact is that the assault on Kupyansk has begun. The city was lost in 2022, but perhaps it will be possible to return it now," concludes Readovka.
Earlier, on November 15, the main event of the day was the development of the breakthrough of Russian attack aircraft into the city limits of Kupyansk. The Russian Armed Forces managed to expand the control zone in the north of the settlement.