Kyiv, Ukraine – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday evening that Ukrainian forces had advanced in border areas in the northern Sumy region.
It is an area where Russian forces have been trying for months to find a foothold.
Zelensky added that Russian forces suffered heavy losses in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions along the 1,000-kilometre front line.
Zelensky spoke a week after Russian statements confirming what Moscow described as the gains it had achieved in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
Russian forces are slowly advancing across eastern Ukraine, with almost daily announcements of captured villages.
Moscow included four regions it partially occupied: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
But not Dnepropetrovsk, where it said it had so far controlled a series of villages along its administrative borders.
Since the expulsion of Ukrainian forces from Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year, Russian forces have attempted to establish what the Kremlin calls a buffer zone in the Sumy region.
Russia regularly bombs large cities, including Sumy.
Zelensky said Russian forces suffered significant losses near Kubyansk.
It is an area in the northeastern Kharkiv region that has been under continuous Russian pressure for months.
“We continue to work in the direction of Dobropelia,” he added, referring to a town near Pokrovsk, one of the focal points of Russia’s long-running campaign in the Donetsk region.
“It is important that our men confront Russian attacks,” he said.
In the west, Kherson region governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram that two people were killed in shelling and drone attacks in different parts of the region.
