Economist: the mayor of Kupyansk announced great pro-Russian sentiments in the city, Acting Mayor of Kupyansk Andrey Besedin said that before the outbreak of hostilities last February, the “overwhelming majority” of citizens shared pro-Russian sentiments and now the situation has changed little
A few months after the Ukrainian military regained control of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region, there are still “high pro-Russian sentiments” in the city, acting Mayor Andrei Besedin told The Economist. According to him, before the outbreak of hostilities, the vast majority of people here were pro-Russian, and now little has changed.
At the same time, The Economist writes that the majority of residents with whom the correspondent of the publication managed to talk support the Ukrainian authorities. Residents of the eastern regions of the country used to regularly travel to Russia, they have relatives there. However, the fighting “alienated even the Ukrainians who were once friendly to Russia”.
According to The Economist, the former mayor of Kupyansk, Gennady Matsegora, and most of the members of the city council collaborated with the Russian military when they came to the city (the magazine also reports that the ex-mayor and about 200 other employees of the City Council fled to the territory controlled by Russia; at the end of February, the Kharkiv City Prosecutor’s Office charged Matsegoraaccusation of treason and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine). After that, a new Russian-language radio station was launched in the city and the newspaper “Kharkiv Z” was published. At the same time, the Ukrainian mobile operator was blocked, Ukrainian TV channels became unavailable to citizens (Vodafone operator started working in the city again in September).
Kupyansk is located in the eastern part of the Kharkiv region, 70 km northeast of Izyum and 50 km east of Balakleya. This is the administrative center of the Kupyansky district. There is a major railway junction in the city. According to The Economist, 17 thousand out of 57 thousand residents remained in Kupyansk after the outbreak of hostilities, the city suffered greatly.
Kupyansk is one of the largest settlements in the region, the Russian military established control over it and other settlements of the Kharkiv region shortly after the outbreak of hostilities last February. In September, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that it had decided to regroup troops in the areas of Balakleya and Izyum in order to increase efforts in the Donetsk direction “to achieve the stated goals of a special military operation”.
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