Ukraine war: Putin claims Russian forces are advancing

Vladimir Putin says Russian troops are moving faster through Ukraine, offering a battlefield picture that sharply conflicts with assessments from Ukrainian and Western observers.

Speaking in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, to representatives of state media, the Russian president claimed that Russian units in Donetsk region had come within a few kilometers of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka. He also said Sviatohirsk had returned to Russian control and that street fighting was already taking place in Dobropillia.

Putin described advances in other parts of the front as well. In the southern Zaporizhzhia region, he said Russian forces had reached the center of Orikhiv. In the northeast, he put the front line about 12 kilometers from Sumy, the regional capital. He further claimed that a large grouping of Ukrainian forces had been encircled on the eastern bank of the Oskil River in Kharkiv region.

Those claims run against recent assessments by Ukrainian and Western observers, who have broadly described the Russian advance as slowing or the front as largely static. They have also reported successful Ukrainian counterattacks near Lyman in eastern Donetsk and in southern Ukraine, while Russian units have been largely pushed back from Dnipropetrovsk region.

The fighting has increasingly extended beyond the front. Moscow has continued attacking power plants and substations, strikes that have caused electricity and heating outages, particularly during winter. Kyiv, in turn, has focused drone attacks on Russia’s oil industry, which is important to the country’s exports. Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s invasion for more than four and a half years.