KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Wednesday that Russian troops have surrounded Ukrainian forces in two key eastern cities of Ukraine and offered to negotiate a deal for their surrender. Ukrainian military officials vigorously denied the claim.
Putin, speaking at a meeting with wounded soldiers at a Moscow military hospital, suggested that the Russian military was ready to open safe corridors for Ukrainian and Western journalists to “let them see with their own eyes what’s going on.”
He claimed Ukrainian troops are encircled in Pokrovsk, a key Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Donetsk region, and in Kupiansk, an important rail junction in the northeastern Kharkiv region.
Russia has recently been pushing its significant advantage in troops and weapons at key points along the around 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line, almost four years after it invaded its neighbor.
But the Ukrainian armed forces said claims of Kupiansk being surrounded are “fabrications and fantasies” while the spokesman for Ukraine’s eastern forces, Hryhorii Shapoval, told The Associated Press that the situation in Pokrovsk is “hard but under control.”
The Ukrainian Army’s 7th Rapid Reaction Corps, which is defending Pokrovsk, said Russia had deployed some 11,000 troops in a bid to encircle the city. Some Russian units had managed to infiltrate Pokrovsk, it acknowledged in a social media post.
Russian officials have in the past made claims about capturing Ukrainian strongholds that have turned out not to be true. Independent verification of the claims was not possible.
Putin’s comments coincided with his diplomatic efforts to persuade the United States, which is seeking a peace deal to end the war, that supporting Ukraine is pointless because it can’t hold out against Russian military superiority. He has also stressed what he says is Russia’s improving nuclear capability as he refuses to budge from his war aims.
Putin on Wednesday indicated that Russia is open for a deal for the Ukrainian troops in the two cities to surrender. A media visit to the areas would allow reporters to see “the condition the encircled Ukrainian troops are there so that Ukraine’s political leadership could make the relevant decisions regarding the fate of their citizens,” he said.
Small groups of Russian soldiers are engaging in house-to-house battles in both Kupiansk and Pokrovsk, Ukrainian officials and Russian war bloggers have said, while artillery and drones target roads. The Ukrainian military is increasingly relying on drones to supply troops.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said late Tuesday that Russian forces had advanced in the Pokrovsk area but “almost certainly do not currently control any positions within the city of Pokrovsk itself.”
It added that the advances “are unlikely to cause an immediate collapse of the Ukrainian pocket in the Pokrovsk direction.”
Asked about the situation in Kupiansk, the spokesman of Ukraine’s Joint Forces Task Force, Viktor Trehubov, said Putin’s claim does not match the reality on the ground. “To put it simply, there is no encirclement,” Trehubov told The AP.
Russian forces have been trying for more than a year to take Pokrovsk, which Ukraine stopped using as a logistical hub in the region as Russia piled on the pressure at the end of last year. The city, which was home to around 60,000 people before the war, is largely in ruins.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has kept up its long-range drone and missile attacks on Russian rear areas in an effort to disrupt logistics by striking oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defenses downed 100 Ukrainian drones over five regions overnight, with 13 airports, including three in the Moscow region, briefly suspending flights because of the attack.
Russia, in the meantime, continued its campaign against Ukraine’s power grid and civilian infrastructure in at least six regions. At least 13 people, including a 9-year-old, were injured, officials said.
The Ukrainian air force said Russia fired 126 strike and decoy drones overnight.
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