Russian forces are advancing increasingly quickly in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin said, claiming they had moved to within a few kilometres of the cities of Sloviansk, Kramatorsk and Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region.
Russian forces had retaken Sviatohirsk and were already engaged in street fighting in Dobropillia, Putin said on Tuesday in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, where he was speaking to representatives of state media.
His claims of Russian gains contradicted assessments by Ukrainian and Western observers, who have recently reported that the Russian advance had slowed. They said there had been little change along many sections of the front, while Ukrainian forces had launched successful counterattacks near Lyman in Donetsk and in southern Ukraine.
Russian forces had also been largely pushed back from the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Putin said Russian forces had advanced into the centre of Orikhiv in the southern Zaporizhzhya region. In the north-east, he said the front line was only about 12 kilometres from the regional capital Sumy and that a large group of Ukrainian troops had been encircled on the eastern bank of the Oskil River in the Kharkiv region.
Both sides have increasingly relied on airstrikes far behind the front lines. Russia has for years targeted power plants and substations, causing electricity and heating outages, particularly during winter. Ukraine has focused its drone attacks on Russia's oil industry, which is vital to its exports.
