Russia Claims Control of 12 Settlements in Ukraine Amid Ongoing Military Advances
MOSCOW – Russia’s top military commander said Monday that Russian forces have seized 12 settlements in Ukraine during the first two weeks of March as part of ongoing advances across the eastern and southern front lines.
General Valery Gerasimov, chief of Russia’s General Staff, said Russian forces were making progress in multiple directions. He highlighted advances around major Ukrainian cities in the conflict, now in its fifth year.
Gerasimov pointed to particularly aggressive operations around Sloviansk in eastern Donetsk region, which Moscow has long targeted as a strategic objective. He said Kostiantynivka, another heavily pressured town, is now 60 percent under Russian control, with street fighting ongoing in the northwestern district.
Russian forces are also advancing westward in Zaporizhzhia region and establishing buffer zones in Kharkiv and Sumy regions near the border, according to the Defense Ministry statement.
However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered a different assessment after meeting with top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi. He said Ukrainian forces have disrupted Russia’s planned strategic offensive for March, with Russian attacks becoming less intense than originally intended.
“Ukraine’s defense forces have disrupted Russia’s strategic offensive operation that the enemy had planned for March,” Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
Ukraine claimed recent successes in Zaporizhzhia, recapturing approximately 400 square kilometers of territory and retaking eight settlements. The Ukrainian military blog DeepState confirmed Russian attempts to breakthrough in Kostiantynivka with gains reported around Sloviansk.
The dispute over territory remains the main obstacle in ongoing negotiations to end the conflict. Russia is demanding Ukraine surrender all of the Donbas region, including areas Russian forces have not captured. Zelensky has rejected this demand.
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