UKRAINE, KHARKIV, Dec. 18 — A man from Kupiansk who got injured on a mine while running away from Russian drones was transported to Kharkiv and treated there, reported Kharkiv military hospital on Facebook. Before that, he couldn’t evacuate from Kupiansk for a month. 

Oleksandra Nemensha, an anesthesiologist who has just returned from the rotation on the Kupiansk axis where she was heading a frontline surgery group, said that about a month ago, this man stepped on a petal-mine, which led to traumatic amputation of his foot. 

“He saw that there was no bleeding and started to treat and dress his wound. He waited for evacuation for a month, and then, along with his mother, decided to leave Kupiansk on foot. They reached the city’s outskirts and were picked up by an evacuation vehicle. They asked the drivers to get them some sort of medical help, and the evacuation team got them to us,” Nemensha says. 

Medics recall that the man’s wound had looked terrible: it was dirty, suppurating, covered with mold, but there was a clear line of necrosis. The man was lucky, Oleksandra said, because the infection didn’t become systemic, and he was feeling more or less okay. When medics asked him how he managed to walk without crutches, he said, “I drank some vodka, and I went.” 

Russia intensified its offensive on Kupiansk in the summer of 2025, entering Kupiansk with small assault groups. Their primary goal is to occupy the city and seize Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, a village south of Kupinask, which is an important logistics hub on the left bank of the Oskil River. 

On Dec. 12, war monitors and military commanders reported that Ukraine’s army managed to push Russians out of the northwestern part of the city. The combat is still ongoing in the center of Kupiansk. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has recently recorded an address near Kupiansk’s entrance sign. 

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