Haunting footage has emerged showing Russian troops advancing through thick fog in a convoy of wrecked cars, many missing doors and windows, in scenes likened to Mad Max.
The video, shared by the Kyiv Post, shows soldiers clinging to battered vehicles and motorbikes as they roll down a debris-strewn road. A broken drone lies by the roadside as the column disappears into the mist.
The clip surfaced as Moscow’s forces claimed new gains near the Ukrainian city of Kupiansk, where Russian troops say they have seized a string of railway stations and an oil depot on the city’s eastern edge.
A commander using the call sign Hunter said units from the 1486th Motorised Rifle Regiment had pushed deep into the city and taken control of stops along the railway to Kupiansk Vuzlovyi, around four miles south of the centre.
He added that fighting continued around the nearby Kupiansk-Sortuvalnyi station.
Russia has been using pincer movements to try to encircle the Ukrainian cities of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region and Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, though Ukraine said on Monday it had delivered supplies to Myrnohrad, east of Pokrovsk.
Russian war bloggers published an unverified video on Tuesday showing what they said were Russian forces entering Pokrovsk along a road enveloped in fog or mist.
Reuters could not immediately verify the location of the video and when it was shot.
The clip showed Russian forces on motorcycles and in an odd assortment of cars and other vehicles, many stripped of doors and windows, driving along a road littered with debris as soldiers watched from the roadside.
Some sat on the roofs of battered cars, while a drone was seen beside the road.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in an interview with the New York Post, that Russia was concentrating some 150,000 troops in a drive to capture Pokrovsk, with mechanised groups and marine brigades part of the push.
Syrskyi added that Ukrainian forces were using built-up urban areas to limit the progress of Russian troops and were confronting Russian sabotage units.
It comes after Ukraine was scrambling to turn lights and heating back on Sunday after Russian attacks targeted energy infrastructure, with the state’s power provider saying its generating capacity was reduced to ‘zero’.
Moscow, which has escalated attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure in recent months, launched hundreds of drones at energy facilities across the country overnight into Saturday.
Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s own infrastructure meanwhile left more than 20,000 people without power in regions bordering Ukraine, local authorities said.
The Russian attacks interrupted electricity, heat and water supplies in several cities, with state power firm Centerenergo warning its generating capacity ‘is down to zero’.
‘An unprecedented number of missiles and countless drones – several per minute – targeted the same thermal power plants that we had restored after the devastating attack of 2024,’ Centerenergo said in a statement.
Power would be cut for between eight and 16 hours a day across most regions of Ukraine on Sunday, state power transmission system operator Ukrenergo said, while repairs were carried out and energy sourcing diverted.
Ukraine’s energy minister called it ‘one of the most difficult nights’ since Russia sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022.
