In this handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service on Dec. 12, 2025, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky records a video message on his mobile phone in front of the road sign marking the entrance to Kupiansk, Kharkiv region, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Russia said on Tuesday it was in control of the key city of Kupiansk in northeast Ukraine, where Ukrainian forces recently claimed to have retaken several areas.
"The city of Kupiansk is under the control of the Russian Sixth Army," Leonid Sharov, head of the Zapad military group, told state news agency TASS.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict have continued this week in Berlin, where Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed progress in talks with the U.S. negotiators on Monday.
European leaders have put forward plans for a multinational force to guarantee peace.
Russia said it had captured Kupiansk in November but Ukraine later claimed it had retaken several areas of the city.
Sharov said "small groups" of Ukrainian soldiers were trying daily to get into Kupiansk, a rail hub in the Kharkiv region.
But he insisted: "All areas are under the control of Russian forces."
Zelensky said in a video published on Friday that he had visited troops in the Kupiansk area, after Kiev announced the recapture of several districts and two nearby localities.
His visit came shortly after Ukrainian forces announced a "breakthrough" in the area.
The Russian army launched a full-scale offensive in Ukraine in February 2022 and currently occupies 20 percent of the country, in the east and south.
Reparations for Ukraine: new European body to be set up
Top European officials on Tuesday met to set up an international body to decide on tens of billions of euros of eventual reparations to compensate Ukraine over Russia's invasion.
The International Claims Commission for Ukraine will assess and decide on claims for reparations, including any amount to be paid out.
The body was expected to be agreed at a high-level summit Tuesday in The Hague attended byZelensky and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
The commission's establishment follows the setting up of a so-called "Register of Damages", which has already received more than 80,000 claims for reparations from individuals or organisations.
The third step will be setting up a compensation fund. It is not clear how that critical part of the process will work in practice.
The reparations mechanism is being coordinated via the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, the 46-nation group protecting human rights on the continent.
EU leaders are under pressure to reach an agreement on what to do with the frozen Russian assets at a summit starting Thursday.
They are seeking ways to fund a loan to Kiev which, under the proposal, would be paid back by any eventual Russian reparations to Ukraine.
But while the plan has the strong backing of many member states, including heavyweight Germany - it has drawn fierce opposition so far from Belgium.
The country is home to international deposit organisation Euroclear - which holds most of the Russian assets - and has so far rejected the proposal because of potential legal repercussions.
The debate over frozen assets comes alongside efforts to end the Ukraine war, which U.S. President Donald Trump said was "closer now than we have been ever."
After two days of talks with senior U.S. officials in Berlin, Zelensky said negotiations were "not easy" but brought "real progress" on the question of security guarantees.
European leaders on Monday proposed a European-led "multinational force" with U.S. support to enforce a potential peace deal.
"Discussions on accountability and reparation and reconstruction must be part of the peace talks," Council of Europe President Alain Berset told reporters on arrival at the meeting in The Hague.
