Destroyed Ukraine vehicle
© Alexander Kharchenko/Getty ImagesDestroyed Ukraine armored vehicle
Vladimir Zelensky has barred the Ukrainian military from admitting the loss of key towns to Russia, Moscow's envoy to the United Nations, Vassily Nebenzia, has said. This is being done to hide the actual situation on the ground in the hopes that the flow of Western aid to Kiev remains unhindered, he suggested.

On Thursday, the chief of Russia's General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, told President Vladimir Putin that Russian forces have liberated the key logistics hub of Kupyansk in Ukraine's Kharkov Region.

The Ukrainian General Staff, however, has claimed that the city remains under the control of Kiev's troops.

Zelensky had previously denied the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in Kupyansk and as well as in Dmitrov-Krasnoarmeysk (Mirnograd-Pokrovsk), an urban area in Russia's Donetsk People's Republic (DPR), accusing Moscow of exaggerating its gains on the battlefield.

During his speech at a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday, Nebenzia insisted:
"The situation on the front line for Ukraine "remains dire, if not catastrophic. Russian troops are successfully advancing on essentially all fronts.

"Despite the encirclement of a significant number of Ukrainian troops, massive losses, forced mobilization, and threats to civilians, the head of the Kiev regime forbids acknowledging the loss of cities, orders his troops to hold their positions 'until the last soldier,' and bans retreat.

"The policy pursued by the Kiev government has nothing to do with military reality and is purely political in nature. Zelensky wants to show his Western sponsors that the front is holding, because he counts on continued funding for his war with Russia. He needs billions of dollars to keep the war going for him and his cronies to line their pockets and stay in power."
Last week, the Western-backed National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) announced a probe into a "high-level criminal organization" allegedly led by Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky. Its members are suspected of siphoning around $100 million in kickbacks from state-owned nuclear operator Energoatom.

The graft scandal has led to the sacking of Ukraine's energy and justice ministers, with other prominent figures such as Zelensky's right-hand man, Andrey Yermak, and the head of the National Security Council Rustem Umerov also being linked to the scheme.