Yurii Fedorenko, commander of the 429th Separate Unmanned Systems Regiment “ACHILLES” of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, says Russian troops were forced to swim across the Oskil River in Kupyansk, and only three out of 10 made it alive. To cut losses, Russian units devised a “scooter”-like device to move along a gas pipeline,but the plan failed.
The pipeline Russian forces tried to use runs from temporarily occupied territories into Russia, Fedorenko said on Hromadske Radio on September 15.
“Earlier, Defense Forces closed valves and carried out engineering damage on the pipeline that runs along the city’s northern edge, on the left bank of Kupyansk,” he said.
To establish a foothold on the right bank, Russian units had to use the river. There are no standard pontoon crossings because Ukraine controls the water surface, so they switched to rafts and boats.
“How did it work? An enemy infantryman would covertly swim across the Oskil, tie a rope to a tree on the right bank; the other end stayed on the left bank, with the rope submerged. Then a three-man infantry team would sprint in with an inflatable boat or a tire tube from a KAMAZ or another large truck. They’d jump into the river, pull on the rope and try to cross quickly from the left to the right bank,” Fedorenko said.
In summer, the Oskil was narrower and the crossing took about a minute. Even so, only three out of 10 troops typically reached the far side; the rest were eliminated on the left bank or in the water, he added.
Fedorenko recalled that Ukrainian defenders noticed a suspicious lull in river crossing attempts. They began searching for where Russians might be massing and considered whether the gas transmission system had been put back into service. The pipe’s diameter, he said, was large enough to ferry infantry.
“They made something like a scooter you lie on. You lie down on this scooter and move along the pipe fast enough from the left to the right bank,” he said.
The pipeline sits about two meters below ground and runs beneath the river, he added.
“Once it became clear the enemy was using this tactic, the Defense Forces took steps to damage the pipe, including in the river area, which led to it filling with water and silt. At this time, the enemy is not using the pipe,” Fedorenko said.
According to Fedorenko, regular Russian army units are not inside the city, but there are “quite a lot” of sabotage-and-reconnaissance groups.
These groups infiltrate from the northern outskirts with two main tasks. First, to plant the Russian tricolor so a drone can film it for propaganda. To do this, they dress in civilian clothes and dash toward recognizable locations in Kupyansk. Many such flag-carrying teams have already been eliminated.
“In other words, it’s a flow - one group is destroyed, another runs in,” the commander said.
The second task is to seize high ground and slip into houses on elevations to set up observation posts, enabling them to track routes, timing and frequency of Ukraine’s logistics and relay that to coordination centers, adjusting drone strikes.
Fedorenko emphasized that the city’s defense remains intense. “In my view, in the short term the enemy does not have the ability to fully occupy Kupyansk,” he said.
On September 12, DeepState analysts reported that Russian forces were carrying out “Pipe 3.0,” entering Kupyansk via the gas pipeline - a trick they previously used in Avdiivka and near Sudzha.
On September 14, analysts reported Russian advances inside Kupyansk. A day earlier, Ukraine’s General Staff said the situation in the city was under control and there were no Russian troops in Kupyansk.
