Ukrainian servicemen fire a self-propelled multiple rocket system towards a Russian position on the frontline in the Donetsk region, Ukraine, 3 June 2025. Photo: EPA-EFE / SERGEY KOZLOV
The Russian Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Russian forces had advanced into Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time since the start of the war, in what would be a significant escalation of Moscow’s territorial ambitions amid stalling peace talks with Kyiv.
According to the ministry, units from the 90th Tank Division had “reached the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic” — Russia’s name for Ukraine’s Donetsk region, of which it currently controls around 70% despite having illegally annexed it in 2022 — and were “continuing to develop an offensive in the Dnipropetrovsk region” on Sunday morning.
Later on Sunday, the Defence Ministry posted footage of Russian forces raising the country’s flag in the Donetsk region village of Zorya, some 20 kilometres from the border with Dnipropetrovsk.
Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on Telegram on Sunday that the Russian military had “launched an offensive” in the Dnipropetrovsk region and warned that “those who do not recognise the realities of war in negotiations will get new realities on the ground”.
Ukraine has so far denied Russia’s claims of an advance into Dnipropetrovsk, however, with a spokesperson for the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine telling news outlet Ukrainska Pravda that the Russian statements did “not reflect reality” and that fighting instead continued in the neighbouring Donetsk region.
The Defence Forces of Southern Ukraine also said that, while Russia had “not given up its intentions” of entering Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian forces were “bravely and professionally holding their section of the frontline” amid a “tense” situation along the region’s border with Donetsk.
The US-based Institute for the Study of War, which monitors battlefield developments, wrote that it had “not observed geolocated evidence” of Russia’s claimed advances around the Dnipropetrovsk border by Sunday evening.
Ukrainian monitoring project DeepState, meanwhile, showed ongoing fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces in the Donetsk region just a few kilometres from the border, but no confirmed advance into Dnipropetrovsk itself.
On Friday, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Pavlo Palisa told reporters in Washington that, over the next year, Russia intended not only to cement its control over the four regions of Ukraine it annexed in 2022, but to “occupy the entirety of Ukraine east of the Dnipro River” before capturing the southern Odesa and Mykolayiv regions to cut off Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
During talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul last month, the head of the Russian delegation Vladimir Medinsky reportedly told Ukrainian negotiators that Russia was prepared to fight the war “forever” and threatened the seizure of two more Ukrainian regions — Kharkiv in the east and Sumy in the northeast — should Kyiv not submit to its demands.
Russian forces were also reportedly closing in on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Sumy, The Guardian reported on Sunday, with its units approximately 18 kilometres from the city. While the city of Sumy has never been occupied by Russia, much of the surrounding region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, was captured in the early days of the war before Russian forces were pushed back three years ago.