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Ukraine Blocks Russian Advance in Kupiansk, Warns of War Crimes Orders Against Civilians
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![Photo of Vlad Litnarovych]( "Photo of Vlad Litnarovych")
Reports claiming that Russian forces have reached the center of Kupiansk are false, Ukraine’s Operational Command “Dnipro” said in a comment to RBC-Ukraine on September 17.
Rumors began circulating online that fighting was underway in the heart of the Ukrainian eastern city. Still, those claims “do not correspond to reality,” Lieutenant Colonel Oleksii Bielskyi, spokesman for the command, stated.
According to Bielskyi, Ukrainian troops have already damaged and flooded a gas pipeline that Russian forces were using to move soldiers toward the city’s outskirts. With that route cut off, invading troops are now trying to cross the Oskil River on rafts and boats.
“Information about combat in the city center is not true. The occupiers are operating in northern Kupiansk, where they infiltrated from the areas of Radkivka and Holubivka. The invaders are being eliminated, some are being taken prisoner,” Bielskyi said.
Captured Russian soldiers told Ukrainian forces they had entered the city in small groups of two to nine men, some wearing uniforms and others dressed as civilians.
Each group had a specific task—for example, seizing a five-story building at one address, or taking control of a nine-story building at another.
“Russian troops were also ordered to kill all civilian men aged 18 to 60. Women and children were to be used as human shields if necessary,” Bielskyi said. He added that an ongoing operation is targeting and destroying the infiltrators inside Kupiansk.
Earlier, the Kremlin launched a coordinated information campaign aimed at overstating Russia’s battlefield achievements and shaping Western perceptions of its victory in Ukraine as inevitable.
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