The Russian army claimed on Thursday to have again captured the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, a key bastion for Kyiv in the eastern Kharkiv region where Russia's soldiers have been steadily advancing.
Kyiv had retaken the eastern railway hub in September months after it fell to Moscow's troops on the first day of the 2022 invasion, but in recent months Ukraine's soldiers have been on the back foot along the front line.
Russian forces "have completed the liberation of the city of Kupiansk," Sergei Kuzovlev, commander of the western troop grouping, told President Vladimir Putin, according to comments broadcast on television. He described the city as a "key cog in Ukraine's defenses."
The news comes as Ukraine officially received a U.S. proposal to end the conflict, which, according to a senior source briefed on the draft who spoke to AFP, appeared to echo Russia's maximalist demands for Kyiv to cede territory currently controlled by Moscow.
Just prior to the announcement, the Kremlin said Putin had visited an army command post Thursday amid Russia's war on Ukraine and listened to officers' reports on the situation at the front.
"The president and supreme commander-in-chief visited one of the command posts for the western troop grouping and held a meeting with the chief of staff," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists, without specifying whether the post was in Russia or occupied Ukraine.
Kupiansk had a population of around 55,000 people before the full-scale war.
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