MOSCOW, February 16. /TASS/. Ukraine has evacuated most of the residents of Kupyansk, Kharkov Region, and its environs, said head of the Kharkov Military-Civil Administration Vitaly Ganchev.

"We know that the Ukrainian authorities have carried out a forced evacuation based on intel that our army was advancing. There are few people living there. Comparing it with Kupyansk in 2022, today we can say that there are no people there at all, because when our troops first entered the outskirts of Kupyansk, there were only about half a thousand [residents] out of the 60,000 who lived there in 2022," Ganchev said.

He said the Kharkov Regional State Administration with the help of the military is in touch with the civilians, trying to provide them with everything they need or organize an evacuation. There are no evacuation requests now — since the beginning of 2026, seven people have been evacuated from the Kharkov Region to the Belgorod Region and the Lugansk People's Republic.