Russia announced today that it has captured two more villages in eastern Ukraine, Reuters reported, quoted by BTA. The news has been independently verified. There has been no reaction from the Ukrainian side so far.
The Russian Defense Ministry reported in its daily briefing about the capture of Lukyanovskoe in the southeastern Zaporizhia region and Boguslavka in the Kharkiv region, to the northeast.
Lukyanovskoe is located in Vasylevsky district, where the front line in Zaporizhia region passes. Russia has declared this Ukrainian region annexed, but controls it only partially.
Boguslavka is located in the Borovsky district of the Kharkiv region. The village is located near the eastern bank of the Oskol River, about fifteen kilometers south of the city of Kupyansk.
Kharkiv Oblast is not among the Ukrainian regions declared annexed by Moscow.
Kupyansk has been one of the main targets of the Russian army in recent times. Russia has already declared the city captured, but Ukraine has denied it.
Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country's armed forces are advancing confidently along the entire front line, especially in the Donbass, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
The Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, reported to Putin that the army has captured 6,640 square kilometers of territory in Ukraine this year, including 334 villages, and that December saw the fastest progress of the year.
Kiev often rejects Moscow's claims regarding the development of military operations, including that Kupyansk and the town of Pokrovsk in eastern Donetsk region have been captured.
Yesterday, for example, Ukraine denied Russia's claims that it controls part of Konstantinovka. The industrial city, which had a population of almost 70,000 before the war began nearly four years ago, is located on the road to Kramatorsk, the administrative center of the part of Ukraine's Donetsk region that has not been captured by the Russian army.
Today, The Armed Forces of Ukraine announced that their drones are controlling all approaches to Pokrovsk and that the city is being defended by significant forces, Ukrinform reported.
The claims by both sides in the conflict have not been independently verified.