Russian forces have captured a village in the Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk for the first time in their three-year offensive, Russian state media and pro-war bloggers have claimed, marking a potential psychological blow toUkraine.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian officials or from the Russian defence ministry.
Russia’s state RIA news agency cited an influential pro-Russian official, Vladimir Rogov, as saying that Russian forces had taken control of Dachnoye just inside Dnipropetrovsk.
“Our troops have advanced further in this direction and have already driven the enemy out of the village of Dachnoye. This is the first populated area in the Dnipropetrovsk region from which the enemy has been expelled,” Rogov wrote on Telegram.
Three weeks ago, Russian officials similarly claimed their forces had entered Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, but Ukrainian authorities said the assault was repelled.
Dnipropetrovsk, which lies to the west of the Donetsk region, is not among the five Ukrainian regions over which Russia has asserted a formal territorial claim. During recent peace talks in Istanbul between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian officials threatened Kyiv with taking more territory unless Ukraine signed a peace deal on Russian terms.
Moscow has been pounding Dnipropetrovsk relentlessly, killing at least 17 civilians in a strike last week that damaged schools, hospitals and a passenger train.
Russia occupies roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory and has been making steady progress in seizing more land, though Kyiv says Moscow’s summer offensive is stalling.
Over the weekend, Russian troops took over a major lithium deposit in Donetsk, cutting off a valuable resource that Kyiv had hoped to use in deepening its economic partnership with the US.
In April, the US and Kyivsigned an agreementto share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defence and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.
But the agreement did not offer Ukraine any security guarantees or protection and Moscow’s capture of the mineral deposits could further weaken Kyiv’s leverage with Washington.
Areas under Russian control in eastern and south-eastern Ukraine include Crimea, more than 99% of Luhansk region and 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Russia also controls fragments of the Kharkiv and Sumy regions.
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Russia has shown no sign of winding down its offensive in Ukraine, even as it continues to claim interest in peace talks.
The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Monday that the Kremlin expected the timeline for a third round of talks with Ukraine to become clear soon, adding that the dynamics of the negotiations largely depended on Kyiv’s position and the effectiveness of Washington’s mediation.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president,Volodymyr Zelenskyy, does not appear any closer to persuading the US to introduce sanctions on Russia.
On Sunday, the US senator Lindsey Graham – one of Kyiv’s staunchest supporters and a close ally of Trump – said the US had backed a bill he introduced targeting Russia’s oil trade. Butt he US president has repeatedly suggested he would be reluctant to impose further sanctions on Moscow, arguing they could jeopardise peace negotiations.