KHARKIV REGION, Ukraine — A plume of smoke gave the Russian soldier away.
Ukrainian troops had killed the rest of his crew several hours earlier, bombing them from drones as they crawled out of a defunct gas pipeline in Kupyansk, searching for a way into the center of this battleground city in northeastern Ukraine that Russia falsely claims to control.
By early afternoon, probably seeking shelter from winter’s bitter cold, the lone survivor entered an abandoned house and lit a fire, sending smoke out of the chimney and into the view of the drones still circling above.
Washington Post reporters watched the operation unfold in real time on screens in an underground base outside the city, where commanders and analysts from Ukraine’s Khartia Brigade barked orders at drone pilots perched in dugouts near the front line. One eventually caught the Russian as he tried to take cover under a tree.
“He’s cooked!” shouted a Ukrainian in the basement as a bomb fell from a drone onto the soldier.
This intense pursuit of individual Russian soldiers trying to infiltrate Kupyansk has been key to Ukraine’s strategy for solidifying control over most of the city in recent months — a remarkable turnaround after it appeared poised to fall last summer.
Russia initially seized Kupyansk, a key rail hub that sits on an important logistical resupply route, in 2022, but lost control of the city during a Ukrainian advance later that year. It never gave up on taking it back, and it intensified its efforts last year as Ukrainian defenses slipped and peace talks got underway.
This counteroffensive in the northeast, which is ongoing, amounts to one of Kyiv’s few concrete battlefield successes of the past year, and proves — the troops here say — that Ukraine’s military, when properly armed and organized, can still push Russian forces back.
Moscow’s willingness in recent months to expend immense resources in manpower and equipment to try to take the city indicates that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war aims continue to extend far beyond the Donbas region that remains the focus of White House peace talks.
Russia also may have sought to use the city as a bargaining chip to pressure Kyiv into a trade for Ukrainian territory elsewhere — an aim Ukraine has since thwarted. Kyiv has also long insisted it would reject any initiatives to trade territory with Russia.
“We understand that we need to create proper conditions to give our president more leverage at the talks, because our foreign policy is primarily based on our success on the battlefield,” said Col. Maksym Golubok, the Khartia Brigade’s chief of staff. Ukraine’s success in Kupyansk, he added, “gives our president one of those cards.”
Last summer, with Ukraine focused on stretches of intense fighting elsewhere, including in the Donetsk region, Russia identified weak points in the defenses of Kupyansk. The sudden push took the Ukrainian troops by surprise, and the front nearly collapsed.
Ukrainian commanders, including from several prominent brigades and units that were not even deployed to Kupyansk at the time, raised urgent alarm, warning top military officials that the city would be encircled and fall if skilled reinforcements were not sent immediately. Such a loss would have cut off key logistics routes Ukraine needs for other sections of the front and delivered a major win to Putin as he was trying to undermine Ukraine’s position at the negotiation table.
“‘If you don’t give us units with trained assault troopers, we are going to lose Kupyansk,’” Maj. Yuriy Fedorenko, commander of Ukraine’s 429th Unmanned Systems Brigade, or the Achilles Brigade, recalled telling top officials last summer, including Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the commander in chief.
“We were on the brink of losing it,” Fedorenko said. “Thank God, they heard us.”
Ukraine urgently shifted attention to the city, sending in specialized drone and infantry units and wresting back the initiative. Ukrainian brigade and battalion commanders fighting for Kupyansk said they are now engaged in “seek and destroy” missions to clear the fewer than 100 Russian foot soldiers still scattered through the city center and to stem the flow of arrivals coming from the eastern side of the Oskil River that bisects the city and some villages nearby.
Russia never managed to “hold defensive positions in Kupyansk. They didn’t take the city, they infiltrated,” said Col. Serhii Sidorin, a commander in Khartia.
Every day, Russian soldiers still try to increase their presence in the city, sending men across the river on inflatable rafts or through the empty gas pipeline that runs below it. Drone footage reviewed by The Post shows dead Russian soldiers scattered around pipeline exits and around the river itself.
“It’s like whack-a-mole,” Golubok said. “We’re holding a hammer and those moles keep popping up.”
Last month, days after Putin announced, falsely, that Russian forces had seized the city, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky broadcast a video from Kupyansk’s entrance to refute his claim. On Jan. 10, Khartia soldiers drove home the point by raising a Ukrainian flag over the city administration building, where Russian soldiers once held positions.
Ukraine has long warned that Putin, who already claims to have annexed several Ukrainian regions he does not fully control, would not be satisfied even if Ukraine were to agree to cede more territory in the Donbas area in exchange for a ceasefire. Kyiv also insists that it will not engage in discussions about territorial trades, despite reports the Kremlin would consider retreating from parts of the Sumy and Kharkiv regions in exchange for full control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which make up Donbas.
Russia’s false claim about the city was an attempt to justify personnel losses, quell war fatigue and draw out peace talks through claims of territorial gains, said Fedorenko, the Achilles commander.
“How much did Putin spend on the war? How many of his own soldiers did he kill?” he asked. “Those losses can only be justified with a lie. Kupyansk is one element of his propaganda.”
Despite significant Ukrainian progress weeding out Russian troops from the city, street fights continue between small groups of soldiers in the center, where both sides — unable to safely move equipment in or out — are being resupplied and assisted by drones.
The battles have been fierce, and Ukraine has also suffered significant casualties and faces worsening fighting conditions in freezing temperatures and snow.
Each day, Ukrainian drone units target Russian soldiers as they emerge from the pipeline to infiltrate the city. Russian troops travel as far as nine miles underground, sometimes crouching down on electric scooters to speed up their trips, Ukrainian commanders said. Some soldiers emerge showing signs of chemical poisoning from the pipe.
Russia has used pipelines to infiltrate before, including in the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, and in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukraine seized land in 2024.
Captured prisoners of war informed Ukraine of the pipeline route during interrogations last summer, helping to refocus Ukrainian efforts on identifying and attacking the exit points. Ukraine also studied the pipeline’s building plans to determine where it could strike sections of the pipe underwater.
Anton Shmyhal, 25, commander of Achilles’ 1st Battalion, said his team studied the plans and focused on destroying not only exits from the pipe but also any natural hiding spots nearby.
“They’d go by foot, coming out of the pipeline and running to find shelter in one of the forests nearby,” he said. Some would then change into civilian clothes and hide weapons in backpacks to try to infiltrate the city, where some civilians remained.
In November, Shmyhal organized the targeting of underwater sections of the pipe, dropping 33-pound bombs from drones. For the next two weeks, they saw no movement out of the pipe — and the Russians again had to cross over the river using rafts. But Russia quickly built new entrances and began sending troops through the pipeline again, he said.
“If they have anything, it’s human resources. The way I use drones, they use humans,” said Abat, a lieutenant colonel in Khartia who spoke on the condition he be identified by only his call sign because of security concerns. “… They’re being pushed out of the pipeline, just to try to test us. If they throw in 10, they know maybe two will get to a position.”
At the current pace, fully clearing the city could take an additional six months, Abat said, due to the complex nature of searching for hiding soldiers while up to 100 Russian drones circle overhead. Soldiers can hide under stairs, or in other small crevices, then open fire on Ukrainian troops, destabilizing an area that they thought was clean.
“Kupyansk is a big city. Even 100 people in basements, you can search for them for months,” said Vitalii, a drone unit commander in the Achilles Brigade.
Still, he sees preventing Russia from moving heavy equipment into the city and restricting the existing troops to around one square kilometer within the city as “obviously an extensive and notable victory.”
“Unfortunately,” he added, “there are not more of them.”
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