Putin says Russia has captured nearly 5,000 square km in Ukraine this year
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian forces have captured almost 5,000 square kilometers (1,930 square miles) of land in Ukraine by 2025, with Moscow retaining full strategic initiative on the battlefield, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
Speaking at a meeting with Russia’s senior military commanders, Putin said that Ukrainian forces were withdrawn from all sections of the front. He said Kiev was trying to attack deep into Russian territory, but this would not help change the situation in the war that has been going on for more than 3.5 years.
“Currently, the Russian armed forces fully retain the strategic initiative,” Putin said at the meeting in Russia’s northwest, according to Kremlin minutes.
“This year, we liberated approximately 5,000 square kilometers of land and 212 settlements, including 4,900.”
He said Ukrainian forces “withdrew along the battle line despite attempts at violent resistance.”
Russia’s Defense Ministry reported Tuesday that two more villages had been captured along the front, which Ukraine’s top command said now stretches more than 1,250 km (775 miles).
Ukraine’s accounts of the situation on the front line say that Kiev’s forces are making gains in the Donetsk region, especially near the town of Dobropillia. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy also said that Ukrainian forces regained territory in the Sumy region, a border region where Russia has a foothold.
Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, told a meeting of senior commanders that Russian forces were “advancing in almost all directions.” He said Ukrainian forces were focused on slowing Russia’s advance.
Gerasimov, the overall commander of Russia’s war effort, said Moscow’s troops were advancing towards Siversk and Kostyantynivka, key cities in the main theater of the Donetsk region.
He said that they cleared Ukrainian forces from the city of Kupiansk, which has been under Russian attack for months in the northeast of Ukraine, and advanced in the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions further south. They were also making progress in creating buffer zones in the northern Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
In his speech at the meeting, Putin said Russia’s goals remained the same as the “special military operation” launched in February 2022, which aimed to “demilitarize and de-Nazi” its smaller neighbor.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Chris Reese and Rod Nickel)
