“As a result of a successful operation, the enemy was destroyed. The right bank of the Oskil River is under the control of” Ukrainian forces, the Ukrainian army general staff said in a statement.
According to the army, the Russian troops, more numerous, “crossed” the river in the Kharkiv region (north-east) and tried to create “a bridgehead” on its eastern bank near the village of Novomlynsk, nearby of Koupiansk, before being pushed back by the Ukrainians.
Russia has not commented on these statements. The Russian Defense Ministry, for its part, limited itself to saying that its troops “had improved their tactical position” near the town of Kupiansk, without giving further details.
The Ukrainian army did not specify when these operations took place, but Ukrainian military bloggers who follow the fighting on a daily basis recently indicated that the Russians managed to cross Oskil near Novomlynsk around November 24.
The creation of a Russian bridgehead in this area would risk further complicating the defense of Koupiansk, an important railway hub located around twenty kilometers to the south.
470 kilometers long, the Oskil (Oskol in Russian) has its source in the Russian region of Kursk, bordering Ukraine, before joining the Siversky Donets river in the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, where kyiv’s troops are positioned on its western bank and those of Moscow, on the eastern bank.
The town of Kupiansk, which had 24,000 inhabitants before the Russian invasion launched almost three years ago, was occupied by Moscow forces in the first days of the war, then recaptured by the Ukrainian army during its counter-attack. lightning offensive in fall 2022.
