KHARKIV OBLAST, UKRAINE, Apr 29 — In the Kupiansk direction, Russian troops tried to advance in the area of Berestove in the Kharkiv Oblast and Stelmakhivka in the Luhansk Oblast, but the Ukrainian Armed Forces repelled all six 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 4, Kharkiv Oblast Governor Oleh Syniehubov said the fighting paused on the axis because Russians were rotating their units to compensate for significant losses. Later, on April 18, the General Staff reported that Russians renewed localized assaults on the Kupiansk axis. 

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. 

In addition, on April 28, the Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, wrote in his Telegram that the main areas of concentration of Russian troops on the Kupiansk axis are the villages of Stelmakhivka and Berestove. According to him, the Russians had partial success there, but Ukrainian troops stopped them. Syrskyi also added that the Ukrainian Defense Forces improved their tactical position in Synkivka in the Kupiansk direction.

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.

Also, according to the General Staff, there were 131 combat clashes along the frontline over the past day. Russia launched a missile strike and 82 airstrikes, and fired 108 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 120 settlements in the Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts.

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  • 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.”