The Russian army Monday claimed to have captured another village in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, moving deeper into Ukrainian territory. The Russian forces are slowly gaining ground in eastern and central Ukraine, in areas that normally have few inhabitants or intact buildings left.
The Russian Defence Ministry said its forces had seized the settlement of Zaporizke in the region, which Russian troops recently advanced into for the first time in the three-and-a-half-year offensive.
Kyiv denies that Russian troops have gained a foothold in the Dnipropetrovsk region, an important industrial hub.
The central region of Dnipropetrovsk has previously been largely spared from fighting that has ravaged swathes of eastern and southern Ukraine, until Russia said its forces broke through in July.
Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions–Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea–that Moscow has publicly claimed as Russian territory.
Following U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a Ukraine-Russia summit, Russia last week ruled out any immediate meeting between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky.
