JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia’s Offensive to Reverse Ukraine’s Gains Is Stalling” – WSJ

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“… Kupyansk was captured by Russia without a fight in February 2022 …. Ukrainian forces reclaimed the city in a lightning offensive a year ago … oust[ing] Russia from nearly all of Kharkiv and parts of [the] nearby Donetsk and Luhansk regions. …. Russian troops have remained within artillery range of Kupyansk … [launching] nearly daily barrages. In [recent] weeks, as Ukrainian forces launched a push in [Ukraine’s] south … Russia unleashed its own offensive toward Kupyansk, deploying more than 50,000 …. [but with] little success. … Russia is using Storm Z penal units — made up of prisoner recruits—at the Kupyansk front, according to Ukrainian commanders. Some … were so poorly equipped that only one out of three … carried a rifle, with others expected to pick up the weapons of fallen comrades or to capture them, said a Ukrainian battalion commander ….”

A Russian prisoner recently captured in that part of the war reportedly was convinced that he was fighting against the United States, seeking to liberate Ukraine from what he believed was an American occupation.

Before the war, Kupyansk was an urban area with a population of 50,000. During Russian occupation, Russia used it as the capital of the occupied part of the Kharkiv region of eastern Ukraine.

Click here for: “Russia’s Offensive to Reverse Ukraine’s Gains Is Stalling; With 50,000 Russians deployed to retake the city of Kupyansk, Ukrainians hold their ground and seek a semblance of normal life” – Wall Street Journal/ Yaroslav Trofimov