Ukrainian forces have admitted that Russia’s military has crossed into the eastern industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk and are trying to establish a foothold.
“This is the first attack of such a large scale in Dnipropetrovsk region,” Viktor Trehubov, of the Dnipro Operational-Strategic Group of Troops told the BBC, although he made clear their advance had been stopped.
Russia has claimed throughout the summer that it has entered the area, as its forces try to push deeper into Ukrainian territory from the Donetsk region.
In early June, Russian officials said an offensive had begun in Dnipropetrovsk, although the latest Ukrainian reports suggest they have barely breached the regional border.
Any Russian advance into Dnipropetrovsk would be a blow to Ukrainian morale, as a US-led diplomatic bid to bring the war to an end appears to be flagging despite President Donald Trump meeting Russia’s Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
The Ukrainian DeepState mapping project assessed on Tuesday that Russia had now occupied two villages just inside the region, Zaporizke and Novohryhorivka.
However, Ukraine’s armed forces general staff denied that was the case. The military “continue to control” Zaporizke, it said in a statement, and “active hostilities are also ongoing in the area of the village of Novohryhorivka”.
Moscow has not laid claim to Dnipropetrovsk, unlike Donetsk and Ukraine’s four other eastern regions, but it has attacked its big cities, including the regional capital Dnipro.
Before the war Dnipropetrovsk had a population of more than three million and was Ukraine’s second biggest centre of heavy industry after the Donbas, which is made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Although Russian forces have made slow progress in capturing territory and have suffered very high casualties, they have made recent gains in Donetsk.
A small infantry group made a sudden 10km (six mile) push beyond Ukraine’s defensive lines near Dobropillia earlier this month, but latest indications suggest their advance has been halted.
Putin is reported to have told Trump he would be willing to end the war if Ukraine handed over the areas of Donetsk region it still controls, but many Ukrainians believe Russia’s leader has other plans.
Col Pavlo Palisa, deputy head of the presidential office in Kyiv, warned reporters in the US in June that the Kremlin wanted to occupy all of Ukraine east of the Dnipro river, which cuts Ukraine in half.
The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, also warned that handing Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal was “a trap”. “We are forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession and they are the ones who are the aggressor here,” she told the BBC.
After meeting Putin in Alaska and then Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, Trump said last week he had begun arrangements for a summit between the two leaders.
By the end of last week hopes of a breakthrough had dimmed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted the “agenda [for a summit] is not ready at all” and no meeting was planned.
He also said any discussion on future security guarantees without Russian involvement was “pointless”, even though that would be a non-starter for the West.
President Zelensky has meanwhile urged his Western allies to intensify efforts aimed at agreeing future security guarantees in the event of a deal.
He met the head of Britain’s armed forces, Adm Sir Tony Radakin, in Kyiv on Tuesday and the UK prime minister’s spokesman said the UK would be ready to put troops on the ground once hostilities had ended.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Tuesday that security guarantees for Ukraine would first and foremost enable the Ukrainian army to defend their country in the long term.
Merz said Zelensky had made clear he was ready to sit down with Putin and now it was Moscow’s turn: “If the Russian president is serious about putting an end to the killing, then he’ll accept the offer.”
