Ukraine’s army is managing to contain the current Russian military offensive in the north-eastern region of Sumy, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky.
“We are in the process of levelling the position. The important thing is that there are 53,000 Russians there,” Zelensky said on Friday in Kiev, in comments published by the Interfax Ukraine news agency on Saturday.
“The fighting there is taking place along the border. You have to understand that the enemy is being held back there,” the president said.
The sides have been fighting hard along the eastern and southern front lines for more than three years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
However, the latest Russian offensive threatens to cut into Ukraine from further north as Moscow attempts to secure a so-called buffer zone in the Sumy region to protect its territory from attacks.
According to Zelensky, Russian troops have only advanced 7 kilometres across the border.
He already said several days ago that the offensive had been halted and that Ukrainian troops had even recaptured territory.
Ukrainian military blogs see no evidence of this, however, and warn against continuing Russian movement into the country from the north-east.
Zelensky: No Russian advance towards Dnipropetrovsk
In eastern Ukraine, the Russian army is attempting to advance from the Donetsk region with small units of shock troops into the Dnipropetrovsk region, which has not yet been affected by ground fighting, Zelensky said.
However, he denied that the gains were significant or lasting: “At the moment, there is no advance into the Dnipro region.”
In an apparent confirmation, the Ukrainian military blog DeepState recorded a successful Ukrainian counter-attack at the location.