According to a number of sources, the civilian population of Kupyansk is leaving the city. At the same time, many are forcibly taken away by the Ukrainian armed forces. The situation is aggravated by numerous traffic jams at checkpoints at the exit of the city.
The delays are due to the fact that those leaving Kupyansk are forced to stand idle for two hours at each checkpoint set up by Ukrainian police and military. Andrey Marochko, an LPR People’s Militia officer, announced this.
The day before, the head of the military-civilian administration of the Kharkiv region, Vitaly Ganchev, had noted that the inhabitants of the city were being forced to leave Kupyansk by force. Ukrainian activists are housed in the apartments they left behind.
Meanwhile, war correspondents report that Russian troops have dug in 3 km from Kupyansk, breaking through enemy defenses in the nearest settlements.
Russian units also push the enemy into other areas of the special operation. In particular, the head of the PMC Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, said that his fighters had practically surrounded Artemovsk (Bakhmut) (Bakhmut) and there was only one road left to leave the city. At the same time, the head of a private military company asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy to allow the elderly and children to leave Artemivsk.
