The defecting general whose reports on the situation at the front end up on Putin's desk. Lead the assault on a supposedly “besieged” city

Lieutenant General Sergei Storojenko, commander of Russia's 6th Combined Army, is the highest-ranking deserter among those waging war against the country of his birth. He grew up in a village two hours' drive west of the city of Kupiansk, under siege by Russian troops led by himself, reports The Telegraph.

He is tasked with his mission to recapture this vital stronghold on the northeastern edge of the front line, which has been under constant attack for two years. Kupiank was occupied in the first months of the war and released a few months later. And now Ukrainian forces are fighting to save him.

If captured it would represent Russia's gateway to the wider region, threatening key supply lines and allowing Vladimir Putin's forces to advance on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, a more important target, though not an objective in itself.

Under Storojenko's command, so many Russian soldiers were killed that Ukrainian bloggers bitterly joked that they sometimes wonder if the general might be on their side.

A decorated former Ukrainian officer, he defected during Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014.

At present, his difficult task probably has him juggling degrees of truth about the situation on the battlefield – in such a way as to approximate the version desired by the Kremlin.

Either showing a disregard for the facts or perhaps misinformed by the general's reports, Vladimir Putin said last week that thousands of Kiev soldiers in the city would be encircled.

Even the Russian propagandists saw something else.

Major Victor Tregubov, a spokesman for Ukraine's Joint Forces Group, poked fun at what he called the Russian leader's “alternate reality.”

“The city is far from being surrounded… Ukrainian defenses are holding out, but the situation is difficult – both statements can be true at the same time,” he told The Telegraph.

Another frontline city in danger

According to analysts' estimates, around 13,000 Russian soldiers have been killed on this front in the effort to capture the city, and yet the Russians have made no major progress.

Russian forces currently occupy the northern districts of the city, while Ukraine retains control of the east and south, according to Deep State, the Ukrainian open-source analysis project. An unknown number of Russian soldiers are in the center of the city.

“Russia is trying to take the city inch by inch, building by building. The tactic works, but only if you have unlimited infantry and don't care about their lives,” Major Tregubov says of the battle of attrition Russia is engaging in, the battle pattern now familiar, only more aggressive due to drones and new tactics.

To bypass Ukraine's defenses and fool the drones, Russia has adopted infiltration tactics that it has used in other areas of the front, notably Pokrovsk, sending small sabotage and reconnaissance groups of only two or three men to sneak past Ukraine's defensive lines.

The infiltrators — often dressed as civilians and sometimes in Ukrainian military uniforms, both considered war crimes under international law — seek to wreak havoc behind enemy lines by targeting drone operators and threatening logistics. Most are killed before reinforcements arrive, but those who remain become a threat as the Russian presence becomes concentrated.

Andrii “Mazhor”, an artillery commander in the 15th Operational Brigade, said that despite the high number of casualties, the Russians continued their attempts to enter the city through a narrow, heavily guarded corridor.

“Compared to other sectors of the front, I have not seen soldiers of the Russian Federation die so needlessly as here. I have not seen any wounded soldiers evacuated,” he told Ukrainian media.

In early September, Russian forces used an underground network of pipelines under the Oskil River, a natural defensive barrier protecting the city, to bypass Ukrainian positions on the northern outskirts of the city.

Crawling through tunnels for several kilometers, Russia was repeating a dangerous ambush method for the third time, after the success at Avdiivka and a high-casualty operation at Kursk.

Ukrainian forces later said they had blown up sections of the pipeline and captured dozens of soldiers, but admitted an unknown number of soldiers had still slipped into the city. Other Russian troops tried to cross the river on rafts and boats, but they became easy targets for Ukraine.

The role of the traitorous general

Storojenko's reports reach the desk of General Valeri Gherasimov, Russia's top general, who directly informs Putin of progress on the battlefield. Moreover, Gerasimov trumpeted, since August, the claims about Russia's success in Kupiansk.

Nicknamed “The Sentinel” by his officers, he previously commanded the largest Ukrainian unit in Crimea. He crossed into Russia after the invasion of the peninsula, and is said to have encouraged hundreds of soldiers under his command to follow his example.

Decorated with the medal “For the recovery of Crimea”, he took command of the newly formed 126th Coastal Defense Brigade in Crimea, steadily rising in rank.

According to a BBC Ukraine investigation, he was directly involved in the planning and organization of the large-scale invasion. He led the 35th Army in Kharkiv – where his relatives still live today – and led an offensive that turned into a major defeat in the city of Izium in 2022.

In 2023, he was promoted by Putin to lieutenant general and took command of the 6th Army and the assault on Kupiansk.

“All traitors will be brought to justice”

Major Tregubov said Lt. Gen. Storojenko was not a figure to inspire fear among the defending troops, given the “numerous disasters” that had occurred under his command.

“Everyone in Kupiansk knows who they are fighting against, what was a shock 10 years ago is now old news. All traitors will be brought to justice,” he said.

About 500 civilians are believed to remain among the ruins of Kupiansk, which had a pre-war population of 27,000, as Russia tries to bring the city to its knees.

Evhen Koliada, head of the Relief Coordination Center (RCC), which is helping civilians in Kharkiv, said: “It is not possible to survive in the city, let alone live.”

“There is no water, no electricity, no gas, and the bombings, rocket attacks and strikes are constant.”

Winter is setting in, food supplies are running low and it has become far too dangerous for civilians to leave their homes, while there are shootings in the streets and “more FPV drones in the sky than birds”.

Attacks on civilians

Russian drones “also hunt civilians” and currently it is almost impossible to evacuate them, he explained.

Ivan Ostapciuk, speaking from a displacement center in Kharkiv, said Russian soldiers who entered the city from the north were roaming the streets with guns, checking houses. “Some were young, they looked as scared as we were.”

Residents were afraid of being shot or killed by a drone. “You encourage yourself: 'maybe not today'. Fear becomes like another neighbor – always around, even when it's quiet,” he said.

“Kupiansk has become unrecognizable. Many streets are gone, houses are torn down, trees burned. The school where my grandchildren studied is now just ruins. But life is stubborn. Flowers still bloom among the broken bricks, and people are coming back, repairing windows, planting gardens. We have lost a lot, but not the will to live.”

With Russia's growing desperation to subjugate the city, reports of war crimes committed by its troops against residents have multiplied.

On October 3, Ukrainian intelligence intercepted a call from a Russian commander in which he discussed how one of his men “opened fire on the entire building” and targeted three civilians.

In another intercepted call on October 19, a Russian officer can be heard giving the order: “When the civilian in the blue hat passes by, shoot him and take the body.”

In response, Ukraine's Northern Command wrote on Telegram: “This is not an accident – ​​this is their terror strategy. They are not coming to 'liberate' – they are coming to kill, torture and intimidate. Their war is not with the army, but with the civilian population.”

Volodymyr Zelensky announced that “a liberation operation is underway” to remove up to 60 Russian soldiers from the city. Without providing any evidence, the Russian defense minister dismissed the claim, arguing that Ukrainian units were trapped in what he called “cauldrons” with no option but to surrender.

The truth is lost somewhere in the fog of war. Only a small number of people in the Ukrainian military are authorized to speak about the current situation.

Unlike the besieged town of Pokrovsk further south in the east of the country – Russia's current focal point in Donbas – Kupiansk does not appear to be about to fall.

Russian forces are penetrating weak defenses but have not been able to destabilize Ukrainian defenses to the same degree as at Pokrovsk, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

In part, this is due to the open terrain of Kupiansk, which makes it dangerous to move around, but mainly because Russia has not committed the same level of combat power and resources to capturing the city.

And yet, the fates of the two destroyed frontline cities, 200 kilometers apart, seem to be linked.

“Compared to Pokrovsk, the situation in Kupiansk looks good,” says Ivan Stupak, a Ukrainian military analyst and former officer in Ukraine's security service.

The city is likely to hold out until at least December or January, “but much depends on the extent to which both sides have the ability to bring in supplies and reinforcements.” If Pokrovsk falls and Russia redeploys some of these forces to the north, “then the situation becomes much more difficult.”

“Kupiansk is not the main objective for now,” he said. It could be soon.