KUPYANSK, Ukraine—Ukrainian troops in Kupyansk are running low on ammunition and weapons as they fight to remain in control of a city that doesn’t even want to be saved from the Russians. In this eastern town, soldiers say that they are afraid that pro-Russian civilian collaborators might help to poison, bomb, or otherwise kill them because they believe that life under Vladimir Putin’s occupation would be better than living in a free Ukraine.
Located in the eastern Kharkiv region, Kupyansk was once nicknamed “Little Russia” and has become known for its pro-Russian sentiment. It was the first city to surrender to Russian forces at the start of the full-scale invasion, and it did so without a single shot being fired, which was partially due to Kupyansk’s pro-Russian mayor, Hennadiy Matsehora, who told residents to “avoid human sacrifices and destruction of our infrastructure,” according to Deutsche Welle at the time.
By Feb. 27, 2022, Kupyansk was already occupied, and it would remain under Russian control until September 2022, when Ukraine’s rapid counteroffensive saw Kyiv reclaim 1,160 sq miles of land in just two months.
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After the city was liberated, evidence indicated that there had been deliberate destruction to civilian infrastructure, and beatings and torture of detained Ukrainians. Around 11,000 of the once 28,000 residents of Kupyansk remain, and Ukrainian army officials told The Kyiv Independent that as many as 50 percent of them could be pro-Russian.
Life in Kupyansk had begun to return to normal in the months following the city’s liberation, but since last summer, the city has become a front line once again. Kupyansk is now filled with military activity and soldiers say a chunk of the population detests their presence.
Sergey, a soldier with the 60th Brigade who is currently serving with his unit in Kupyansk, said that he could tell who was pro-Russian in the city by the way they looked at him. “The face gives everything away. Immediately, you see a person’s emotions,” he said.
Sergey and his unit have been stationed in Kupyansk for two months and said they feel that many civilians do not want them in the city. “There were [soldiers] who told me they don’t want to rent in Kupyansk. They are afraid that the pro-Russians will say where they are now, that they live here, and they can be bombed.”
The apartment that Sergey lives in with his fellow soldiers, one man named Maksym, and the unit’s commander, Artem, could fit a much higher number of soldiers than just the five who live there. But he said that they live in smaller numbers because they are afraid of their location being discovered and them being killed in an attack.
“If you have one apartment, just three to four people living, no one’s [going] to shoot here. If 15 to 20 lives, [attacks] are going to come here,” he added.
A Losing Force
Sergey’s unit cannot afford to lose any more soldiers. Two years ago, it was a unit made up of 28 men with many of the weapons they needed to push Russian troops out of frontline positions throughout Ukraine.
But since then, 17 of their fellow soldiers have been killed in combat, and they are running low on critically needed supplies to defend Kupyansk. Sergey’s boss, Artem, a man in his thirties, told the Daily Beast that for 10 days recently, his unit had just four guns and 10 bullets.
“There are no shells, no artillery. It is very difficult because we do not have normal artillery assistance. We don’t have many pistols,” said Artem.
The U.S. has not delivered new aid to Ukraine since December. Although earlier this month, the Senate passed a $95 billion foreign aid package, which includes $60 billion for Ukraine, it has still yet to be passed in the House. Throughout Ukraine, soldiers are facing a shortage of supplies, and they are facing an opponent who has an ample stock of money, weapons, and soldiers that they are using to pummel Ukraine.
Artem said that Ukraine’s military is now “100 percent dependent” on Western aid. “Without help, we cannot fight, and our soldiers are tired,” he added. Sergey and Maksym agreed.
On Feb. 17, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukrainian forces had to pull out of Avdiivka, a city in the eastern Donbas region that had been an epicenter of the war for months. With the fall of Avdiivka, there are fears that Kupyansk might be next, and Artem believes that if the U.S. does not give new aid to Ukraine and Western support diminishes, Russia might win the war.
“There are a lot of places where Russians are doing better—the whole of Donbas. Russians have more [of] everything. They’re doing a great job,” Artem said with a sigh.
Ramping up of attacks
Kyiv vowed that it would remain in control of Kupyansk, but the future of the city is growing dimmer by the day. Mandatory evacuation efforts in Kupyansk for families with children occurred last November and on Jan. 16, the governor of Kharkiv Oblast, Oleh Syniehubov, announced on Telegram that the order would be expanded to 26 more villages in the region.
The Daily Beast visited Kupyansk on the day that Avdiivka fell. The sounds of artillery fire on the front lines of the city were heard throughout the day. At around 1 p.m., a two-story apartment building was struck by a Russian missile and firefighters and rescue workers raced to the scene, using large metal cranes, axes, sledgehammers, as well as their hands to sift through the rubble of the attack as they looked for people who had been buried underneath.
Smoke stemmed from the site of the destruction, and residents in a nearby Soviet-style apartment swept up broken glass into dust trays and loaded debris into wheelbarrows. The attack had caused a blast wave that shattered the window of nearby apartments. At the site of the destruction, a firefighter told The Daily Beast that attacks in Kupyansk occurred every other day.
As emergency services workers pulled one woman out of the rubble, carrying her on a stretcher to the back of their ambulance, witnesses gave statements to the police, and Ukraine’s War Crimes Department began to document the attack. Five people were injured, and one person was killed in the attack. After an hour at the sight of the latest bombing, another Russian rocket soared overhead and landed in the near distance.
Still, despite the constant attacks by Russia, Sergey and his unit still feel that the residents of Kupyansk want the Ukrainian soldiers out. Sergey said there were stories of large numbers of the military and civilians gathering in certain locations and then the site was bombed by Russian attacks the following day. He has also heard of civilians who passed themselves off as volunteers who are supposed to be helping the army but, in reality, were Russian collaborators, delivering food to Ukrainian soldiers, who would later discover the food had been laced with poison. Artem and Maksym, too, agreed they were weary of receiving produce from civilians after they heard stories of soldiers being poisoned in Donbas.
“We don’t take any produce here because we understand that it can be poisoned,” said Sergey.
“We take it, [say] thank you, close the door, pour out, wash, give an empty plate, that’s it. It’s not worth it. Suppose you eat some soup, well, it’s not worth it in your life,” he added.
Ghosts of the Soviet Union
Pro-Russian sentiment has been documented in regions across Eastern Ukraine, which has a close proximity to Russia and remains entangled in the ghosts of the Soviet Union.
In Lyman, 70 miles away from Kupyansk, a man who spoke to The Daily Beast requested anonymity as he spoke about his pro-Russian views. Lyman was occupied by Russian troops in May 2022 and, like Kupyansk, remained under Moscow’s rule until it, too, was liberated by the September 2022 counteroffensive.
Once Lyman was freed, two burial sites, including one mass grave with 200 bodies, were discovered. Russia has been accused of committing war crimes in the city, where destruction is vast and missile attacks are omnipresent. Still, the pro-Russian man said that life under occupation was “normal,” and explained that he believed Ukraine was responsible for the attacks that occurred during that time.
The man was born and lived much of his life under the rule of the Soviet Union, which he said he still misses. Ukraine received its freedom from the Soviet Union in 1991, but the man said, “What did Ukraine do? Thirty-three years of independence, and they just destroyed what communists built. Ukraine was strong, and what happened? Under the Soviet Union, it was great.”
It is worth noting, however, that life under Soviet rule was undoubtedly hard. In Ukraine, people believed that they had no freedom under the oppression of the Iron Curtain. But the man, in his seventies, said that he would rather Ukraine be part of Russia rather than its own independent country.
“Going forward, it [is] impossible to live like Ukraine is living, so the best option is to be with Russia,” he said.
Back in Kupyansk, Sergey said, “There are normal people everywhere. In every settlement, there will be some scoundrels, and there will be normal ones. Everyone has a choice.”
Sergey added that while Russians have been known to kill civilians in occupied towns who voice their opposition to the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian soldiers will not do the same. “Everyone has a choice. If he wants to think that way, let him. If he’s strongly pro-Russian, let him leave. Let him understand that he’s on Ukrainian territory,” he added.
