Ukrainian army resists Russian assault in Kupiansk

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A Russian military court has sentenced a man to 24 years in prison for attempting to set fire to a military enlistment center, Russian news agencies reported on Thursday, the latest case of its kind.

Over the past two years, Russia has stepped up the number of cases of “treason”, “sabotage”, “terrorism”, “extremism” or any criticism of the army engaged in Ukraine. These cases are usually tried behind closed doors, and carry very heavy penalties.

As a rule, few details of these cases are made public.

Sergei Andreyev, a crane operator by profession, was convicted of “treason” after setting fire to an army recruitment center in Moscow on the orders, according to the prosecution, of the Ukrainian intelligence services, the state news agency TASS reported on Thursday.

Greece announced on Thursday that it would be reorganizing its defense with a focus on introducing drone systems and strengthening its cyberwarfare capabilities after lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.

Greece must face up to a “different reality” and “rapidly” modernize its forces to meet the demands of the 21st century, Defense Minister Nikos Dendias told the parliamentary defense committee.

The army will introduce four different drone systems, would merge army units and will set aside old weapons, according to the minister. “Every army unit will have drone combat capabilities,” he said.

In order to save funds, more than 130 military barracks will be abolished by next year, Nikos Dendias pointed out, recalling that the country has more than 800 military camps, “more than the United States”.

Russian infantry briefly managed to penetrate the eastern Ukrainian town of Kupiansk, which had already been occupied at the start of the Russian invasion in 2022, before being pushed back by the Ukrainian army, local authorities said on Thursday.

Located in the northeastern Kharkiv region, the town of Kupiansk had a population of around 27,000 before the Russian invasion began in February 2022. “The situation was indeed very difficult” on Wednesday with repeated Russian “assaults”, said the head of the municipal military administration, Andriï Bessedine.

Russian infantry managed to “penetrate” the city before being “destroyed”, their vehicles having been “destroyed on approach”, he assured. On Thursday, “the situation within the city walls of Kupiansk and its municipality is under control, there are no Russian troops or equipment”, added Andriy Bessedin.

This brief breakthrough comes at a time when the Russian army has been advancing on the eastern front for months, with progress particularly accelerating since October.

The European Union has announced that it has, for the first time, financed the joint purchase of arms by the EU-27, most of which will go to Ukraine. “This is the first time we have used the EU budget to support member states in the joint purchase” of weapons, European Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager said in a statement on Thursday.

The budget line is 300 million euros to help some 20 member states buy air defense equipment, armored vehicles and ammunition, most of which will go to Ukraine, according to the text.

The EU had already financed arms purchases to help Kiev, but outside its budget, thanks to an ad hoc financial instrument.

Voznessenka, the village whose capture was claimed by Ruysia on Thursday, lies less than 10 kilometers north of Kurakhove, a town with a pre-conflict population of around 18,000, which is home to a large deposit of the rare mineral lithium. The Russian army is currently on the outskirts of the town, which is located near a reservoir.

Further north, the town of Pokrovsk, an important rail and road junction for Ukrainian troops, has also been under threat of conquest by Russian forces for several weeks.

Still on the eastern front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky assured us in his daily address on Wednesday that Moscow’s army was “trying to expand its offensive, particularly in the Kupiansk area”, 40 km from the Russian border.

Russia claimed responsibility on Thursday for the capture of a village near Kurakhove in eastern Ukraine, one of the frontline sectors where its troops are advancing against a Ukrainian army that has been retreating for several months.

Russian forces “continued to advance deep into enemy defenses and liberated the locality of Voznessenka” in the eastern Donetsk region, the Russian Defense Ministry said in its daily combat report.

Elon Musk, newly appointed advisor to Donald Trump, lashed out on Wednesday at a senior Nato official, who questioned his handling of social network X as he tackled the topic of misinformation.

Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, head of Nato’s military committee, told a conference of the International Institute for Strategic Studies that he was “very much in favor of freedom of speech” but “not necessarily convinced that […] what Mr. Musk is doing at X is the right approach”. He warned against “misinformation and cyber-attacks”. […] that influence elections”, adding that social networks were “amplifying anything created by groups of bots”, accounts powered by computer programs.

“Return Orwell to fiction,” Elon Musk wrote in response to the release of a video excerpt of these remarks on X, modeling Donald Trump’s favorite slogan “Make America Great Again.” “Guys like him think 1984 is an instruction manual,” the billionaire added, referring to British writer George Orwell’s famous dystopia, which notably tackles themes of totalitarianism and mass surveillance versus free speech.

Donald Trump announced on Wednesday evening that he wanted to appoint Tulsi Gabbard, a 43-year-old former military officer from Hawaii who had defected from the Democratic Party, to head the National Intelligence Agency. Gabbard’s pro-Russian stance at the start of the conflict in Ukraine had caused controversy. Just after the Russian invasion of February 2022, she wrote on Twitter, now X: “This war and suffering could have been avoided if the administration [de Joe] Biden and Nato had simply taken into account Russia’s legitimate concerns about Ukraine’s possible entry into Nato”.

As a reminder, on Wednesday afternoon, during the meeting between Joe Biden and Donald Trump at the White House, the former pleaded for continued US support for Ukraine.

The Ukrainian capital, Kiev, was targeted by a combined Russian missile and drone attack for the first time in over two months, at a time when the Ukrainians are ceding ground on the frontline and fear losing US support.

Russia has stepped up drone raids on Kiev considerably, almost daily since the beginning of October, but combined missile-drone attacks on the capital are rare. In all, six missiles and 90 drones targeted seven Ukrainian regions on Tuesday night, only one of which is on the front line, according to the Ukrainian air force.

Like every day, the editors of 20 Minutes is mobilized to bring you all the information on the conflict. War in Ukraine was declared when Russia invaded the country on the night of February 23-24, 2022, on the decision of Russian President Vladimir Putin. This Thursday marks the 995th day of the conflict.