Ukraine's military says it has repelled a Russian assault on the town of Kupyansk in the northeastern Kharkiv region, rejecting claims by Moscow that it had gained a foothold in the strategically important transport hub, as Russian attacks continued to claim civilian victims.
The General Staff of Ukraine's military said in a statement on November 14 that its forces pushed the attacking force back, causing considerable losses in material and manpower.
Vitaly Ganchev, a Moscow-installed regional official, had previously claimed that Russian forces had occupied positions on the outskirts of Kupyansk and were pressing ahead to the northeast and southeast of the town.
"The information about the occupation of the settlement of Illinka and about the supposed foothold of Russian troops in the town of Kupyansk is not true," the Ukrainian military's Strategic Communications Center said on social media on November 14.
"The General Staff informs that yesterday Ukrainian soldiers stopped the enemy's advancement in Kupyansk, destroyed all its armor equipment and eliminated a large part of its manpower," it said.
Neither the Russian nor the Ukrainian claims could be independently verified.
Russian forces captured Kupyansk, a strategically important railway junction, soon after the start of Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but it was liberated by Ukrainian troops in a lightning counteroffensive in the fall of the same year.
In recent months, Russia has pressed ahead with an offensive in the Kharkiv region while regularly pounding Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, with missile strikes and artillery fire, causing numerous casualties among civilians and damaging civilian and energy infrastructure.
Russian forces have been pressing a slow but grinding offensive along the whole eastern front, making incremental advances as Ukraine's outgunned and outmanned troops struggled to hold their ground.
Ukraine's Black Sea port of Odesa was also targeted on November 14. Regional Governor Oleh Kiper said a Russian attack struck a residential building, killing one person and injuring two.
"Houses, a church and cars have been damaged," Kiper said on Telegram. "In some locations, fires broke out."
He added that emergency crews were tackling the aftermath of what he described as a "mass attack."
Odesa Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov said earlier that the strike knocked out a main pipeline for the supply of heat and forced the shutdown of one of the city's boiler plants.
On November 14, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, said the Kremlin was open to peace talks if the incoming administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump initiates them, as long as they take into consideration the "realities on the ground."
In recent days, Russians reportedly made territorial gains near the heavily damaged town of Kurakhove in the Donetsk region and are threatening to encircle it.
Early on November 14, air defenses shot down 21 out of the 59 drones launched by Russia at targets in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Air Force reported.
The other 38 drones were lost on location after their navigation systems were jammed by Ukrainian electronic warfare systems, the air force said.
Russian shelling killed two people and wounded eight over the past 24 hours in the village of Shevchenko in Donetsk, the regional prosecutor's office reported.
Damaged caused by Russian attacks and a spell of bad weather that saw early snowfalls cut the electricity supply to 43 settlements in the Poltava region, Ukraine's electricity grid operator Ukrenerho said in a statement on November 14.
Russia's Defense Ministry, meanwhile, said its air defenses shot down two Ukrainian drones early on November 14, one over the Kursk region and one over the Belgorod region.
