KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE, Apr 26 — In the Kupiansk direction, Russian troops tried to advance in the areas of Kyslivka and Berestove, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces repelled all 10 attacks, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reports in the morning briefing.

Russians are not abandoning their goal of occupying Kupiansk, a city in the Kharkiv region, again. It is a logistics and railway hub between Kharkiv and Luhansk oblasts, and seizing it would allow the Russian army to boost its supply efforts. 

On April 24, Serhii Melnyk, head of the Kharkiv military garrison, said that the Russian troops resumed their attempts at an offensive on the Kupiansk axis but weren’t successful. “Ukrainian soldiers are professionally fulfilling the tasks of defending [this] direction and causing the enemy to lose manpower and equipment,” Melnyk said.

On April 18, the General Staff reported that Russians renewed localized assaults on the Kupiansk axis. On April 4, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the fighting paused on the axis because Russians were rotating their units to compensate for significant losses. 

General Staff also reported that, in the Slobozhanskyi direction, in the border areas, the Russian military conducts intense sabotage activities to prevent the deployment of Ukrainian troops to more dangerous directions and increases the density of minefields along the state border in the Belgorod Oblast.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses that one of the main efforts of the Russian full-scale invasion is to capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast. 

Also, according to the General Staff’s data, there were 114 combat clashes along the frontline over the past day. Russia launched four missile strikes and 75 airstrikes and fired 66 times from multiple launch rocket systems at the positions of Ukrainian troops and various towns and villages.

In total, the Russian army fired mortars and artillery at more than 110 settlements in the Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts.

Read more

  • The Institute for the Study of War research group released a report saying the Kremlin is conducting a “concrete air and information operation” to destroy Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, and cause panic among Ukrainians, urging them to flee ahead of “possible Russian offensive.”