Russian forces advance and take first village in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, state media say

MOSCOW — Russian forces have taken control of the first village in the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, Russian state media and war bloggers said on Monday (June 30), after Russia took 950 square kilometers of territory in two months.

In Luhansk region in Ukraine's northeast — one of four regions that Russia now claims as its own — the Russia-appointed regional governor said that Moscow's troops were now in full control of the entire region.

Farther south in Donetsk region, also claimed by Russia, Russia-appointed officials said the region's largest city had come under Ukrainian attack, with at least one person killed.

As Moscow and Kyiv talk of possible peace, Russian troops have been advancing slowly across eastern Ukraine, with Russia's Defence Ministry announcing the capture of new villages daily.

And Russian forces have been carving out a 200 square km (77 square m) chunk of Ukraine's Sumy region on the northern border.

The authoritative Ukrainian Deep State map shows that Russia now controls 113,588 square km of Ukrainian territory, up 943 square km over the two months to June 28.

An advance into Dnipropetrovsk region would be evidence of further gains, though Ukrainian officials have denied for weeks that Moscow's forces have made any progress in the area.

Russia's state RIA news agency quoted a pro-Russian official, Vladimir Rogov, as saying that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Dachne just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russia's Defence Ministry has yet to make such an assertion.

In Luhansk region, Russian news agencies said Moscow-appointed governor Leonid Pasechnik told Russian television: "Two days ago, to be precise, we got a report that the territory of Luhansk region has been completely liberated, 100 per cent."

Industrialised region

Russian forces moved quickly through heavily industrialised Luhansk region in the months following Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but small slivers of territory had remained under Ukrainian control.

In Donetsk region, Russian news agencies said Ukrainian forces had attacked the main city, also known as Donetsk, with missiles, damaging several buildings, setting a market ablaze and killing at least one person.

Pictures posted on Ukrainian military websites showed explosions in Donetsk.

Russia has said it is willing to make peace but that Ukraine must withdraw from the entirety of four regions which Russia mostly controls and which President Vladimir Putin says are now legally part of Russia.

Ukraine and its European backers say those terms are tantamount to capitulation and that Russia is not interested in peace and that they will never accept Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine.

The areas known up to now to be under Russian control include the Crimea peninsula, annexed in 2014, more than 99 per cent of the Luhansk region, over 70 per cent of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Source: Reuters