MOSCOW (Reuters) -The Kremlin said on Friday that around 5,000 Ukrainian troops were trapped on the eastern bank of the River Oskil, in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region.
Reuters could not independently verify the assertion by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov and there was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian military.
Russia said late on Thursday that it had taken control of Kupiansk, a large town that straddles the Oskil, but Ukraine denied it had fallen.
Peskov said Russia’s battlefield progress should convince Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to negotiate now rather than later.
He also highlighted comments on Thursday that President Vladimir Putin made when told by Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, that Ukraine’s political leadership had not given Ukrainian troops any instructions on surrendering despite them being trapped.
Putin accused Kyiv of not thinking about the fate of its own soldiers and said that a major corruption scandal in Ukraine showed the country was no longer run by a political leadership but by an “organised crime syndicate”.
(Reporting by Dmitry Antonov, Writing by Felix Light/Mark TrevelyanEditing by Andrew Osborn)
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