In this handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on December 12, 2025, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky records a video message on his mobile phone in front of the road sign marking the entrance to Kupiansk, Kharkiv region. HANDOUT / AFP
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday, December 12, he had visited troops fending off Russian advances near the embattled city of Kupiansk that Moscow claimed to have captured last month, which Kyiv denies. Ukraine said earlier its army had retaken two settlements in the northern Kharkiv region and pushed Russian troops back in Kupiansk – a strategically important city and a key railway hub.
"Many Russians talked about Kupiansk – we can see. I was here, I congratulated the guys. Thanks to every unit, to everyone fighting here, to everyone destroying the occupier," Zelensky, wearing a bulletproof vest, said in a video posted on Telegram. He did not disclose his exact location, but Agence France-Presse geolocated Zelensky on a road at the entrance to the southwest of the city.
On Friday, the Khartia Battalion said the Ukrainian army had retaken two settlements north of the city. "Kindrashivka, Radkivka, and their outskirts have been liberated, as well as a number of neighbourhoods in northern Kupiansk," it said on social media. The Russian army claimed at the end of November to have again captured the city of Kupiansk, which it first seized in 2022 before Ukrainian forces retook it in the autumn of that year.
