Commentary from Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin:
[ColonelCassad] Regarding our current difficulties in Kupyansk.
1. The current situation defies two extremes: "Everything is bad, everything is lost," and "What do we care about Kupyansk? We don't need it at all," which is to say we didn't really want it.
2. We need Kupyansk. There's no point in squandering our lands, especially considering how hard it was to enter Kupyansk. If the LBS freezes, Kupyansk will remain in the hands of whoever controls it. And it's not a given that it will be included in any post-war territorial swaps. Therefore, we must establish control over the entire city one way or another.
3. For now, our troops still hold part of the city, but the problems have only worsened over the past week, and stabilization of the situation in Kupyansk and the surrounding area is out of the question. Yes, the enemy is effectively sacrificing some of its positions in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions, from where it has pulled reserves near Kupyansk, so our command is already taking advantage of this and making significant progress there.
But to turn the situation in its favor, the "West" group needs to stabilize the LBS in Kupyansk and on the western bank of the Oskol, so that it can begin to restore lost positions somewhat later, when the enemy is exhausted and additional reserves are transferred to the Kupyansk sector.
4. This story once again demonstrates that the enemy should not be underestimated in war, even when the overall dynamics of events at the front are in our favor. Let me remind you that even in the spring of 1945, our troops lost cities and even ended up encircled (see, for example, the battle for Bautzen in April 1945), although this did not significantly affect the overall outcome.
5. Will we experience unpleasant events at the front during the war? Of course there will be. Will they change the final outcome of the war? They will not. One can recall Syria and the hysteria in the media after our military failures in Palmyra and Tabqa. Did these local successes save ISIS from defeat? No, they did not. Just as the overall dynamics of the war are quite clear for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, including for Ukraine itself.
6. Regarding mistakes and finger-pointing, I'm confident the military-political leadership will draw conclusions, just as they did with the previous 3rd Army leadership, which misused false reports about the situation on the front in the Seversky Salient. As we can see from the developments near Seversky in recent months, the personnel changes by the General Staff have yielded results, and Seversky has been captured.
More from Boris Rozhin:
Russian Armed Forces liberated the center of Hulyaipole. December 26, 2025.
Russian troops have liberated the center of Hulyaipole.
The Russian flag has been placed on the sandbagged monument to Nestor Makhno. The ruins of the Makhno Museum near the city administration building were also occupied earlier. Drone footage shows a soldier placing a flag on a pile of sandbags surrounding the monument.
The enemy is retreating to the western part of the city, fighting, but having lost most of the major buildings, holding on in the private sector will be problematic, especially given the city's encirclement from the north.
Yesterday's sensational video of a battalion command post of the 102nd Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces captured by our troops sparked outrage in Ukraine, with accusations of Syrskyi lying. The capture of almost entire command posts like these is extremely rare in the news after 2022.
Overall, amid ongoing problems in Kupyansk, where the enemy continues to press, the Vostok group continues to be a reliable source of good news from Zaporizhzhia and the Dnipropetrovsk region.