Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday he had visited troops fending off Russian advances near the embattled city of Kupiansk that Moscow claimed to have captured last month, which Kyiv denies.

Ukraine said earlier its army had retaken two settlements in the northern Kharkiv region and pushed Russian troops back in Kupiansk — a strategically important city and a key railway hub.

‘Many Russians talked about Kupiansk — we can see. I was here, I congratulated the guys. Thanks to every unit, to everyone fighting here, to everyone destroying the occupier,’ Zelensky, wearing a bulletproof vest, said in a video posted on Telegram.

He did not disclose his exact location, but AFP geolocated Zelensky on a road at the entrance to the southwest of the city.

On Friday, the Khartia Battalion said the Ukrainian army had retaken two settlements north of the city.

‘Kindrashivka, Radkivka, and their outskirts have been liberated, as well as a number of neighbourhoods in northern Kupiansk,’ it said on social media.

The Russian army claimed at the end of November to have again captured the city of Kupiansk, which it first seized in 2022 before Ukrainian forces retook it in the autumn of that year.

Russia has in recent months touted advances on the battlefield, where Ukrainian forces are on the back foot.

Kyiv has repeatedly dismissed Russian claims of sweeping advances as Moscow’s attempts to promote a narrative that Ukraine faces imminent collapse, to influence negotiations to end the war.

Washington is now pushing Kyiv to make major territorial concessions as part of its plan to end the nearly four-year war.

‘Russians operate much more effectively in the information space than any of our partners and spread information that doesn’t reflect reality,’ Zelensky told reporters, including from AFP, on Thursday.

‘We have to refute outright nonsense,’ he added.

Russia has not claimed to have formally annexed the Kharkiv region, where Kupiansk is located, and according to Zelensky, the latest version of a draft US plan to end the war could see Russia withdraw from these areas, with Ukraine pulling out of the Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, US president Donald Trump is ‘extremely frustrated’ with Russia and Ukraine, his spokeswoman said on Thursday, as Kyiv said Washington was still pushing it to make major territorial concessions as part of its plan to end the nearly four-year war.

‘The president is extremely frustrated with both sides of this war,’ Karoline Leavitt told reporters. ‘He doesn’t want any more talk. He wants action. He wants this war to come to an end.’

Earlier Zelensky made remarks that appeared to show little had changed in Washington’s core position on how the conflict should end since it sent a 28-point plan to Kyiv and Moscow last month that heavily favoured Russia.

Zelensky said that Washington was still pushing it to cede land to Russia as part of an agreement to end the war that started with Moscow’s February 2022 invasion.

Washington wants only Ukraine, not Russia, to withdraw its troops from parts of the eastern Donetsk region, where a demilitarised ‘free economic zone’ would be installed as a buffer between the two armies, Zelensky told reporters, including from AFP.

Under the latest US plan, Moscow would also stay where it is in the south of the country, but pull some of its troops out of Ukrainian regions that Russian president Vladimir Putin has not claimed to have annexed in the north.

Ukraine has been revising the original US proposal and this week sent a 20-point counter-proposal to Washington, the full details of which have not been published.

‘We have two key points of disagreement: the territories of Donetsk and everything related to them, and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (in the south). These are the two topics we continue to discuss,’ Zelensky told reporters at a briefing.

‘They see Ukrainian forces leaving the territory of Donetsk region, and the supposed compromise is that Russian forces do not enter this territory which they already call a ‘free economic zone,’ Zelensky said about the US plan.

Zelensky has long said he has no ‘constitutional’ or ‘moral’ right to cede Ukrainian land and said Thursday that Ukrainians should have the final word.

‘Whether through elections or a referendum, there must be a position from the people of Ukraine,’ he said.