Ukraine pushes back some Russian advances, Zelensky says

KYIV: Ukrainian forces have pushed back some of the advances Russia made over the summer, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday, calling the operation an “important success” after months of battlefield setbacks.

Zelensky said his troops had reclaimed 160 square kilometres (62 square miles) of land near the eastern coal mining town of Dobropillia, where Russia pierced Ukraine’s defences in August.

US President Donald Trump, meanwhile, expressed mounting frustration at his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for not halting the invasion.

Russia, which has been chipping away at Ukrainian territory for months, did not immediately comment on Ukraine’s claims but announced Thursday that more than 700,000 of its soldiers were fighting on the front line.

Diplomatic efforts to end the three-and-a-half year war have fallen apart in recent months, with Russia last week announcing peace talks were on “pause” and Zelensky warning Russia still wanted to occupy “all of Ukraine”.

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Following a meeting with troops in the eastern Donetsk region on Thursday, Zelensky said his army was “achieving results” in an ongoing counteroffensive there.

“Since the start of the operation, our warriors have already liberated 160 square kilometres,” he said in a video address.

He said Ukrainian forces had “cleared” Russian troops from an additional 170 square kilometres of land, but had not yet formally taken the territory.

Zelensky did not say when Ukraine made the gains, but said Russia had “suffered thousands of losses”.

“Ukraine is quite rightly defending its positions, defending its land,” he added.

DeepState, an online battlefield tracker linked to the Ukrainian army, showed Russian troops made rapid advances near Dobropillia last month but that some of their gains had evaporated in recent weeks.

Putin ‘let me down’

Ukraine and its Western allies say Russian troops are making huge losses for comparatively small territorial gains, while leaving towns and villages destroyed in their wake.

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Trump, who has been seeking to broker an end to the war, said Thursday he was disappointed in Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s apparent refusal to accept a peace deal.

“He’s let me down. He’s really let me down,” Trump said at a press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Britain.

Trump promised to end the war quickly after taking office in January, but has failed to extract concessions from the Kremlin, despite a landmark summit with Putin in Alaska in August.

Russia accuses European countries of frustrating the peace process, but Kyiv and its European allies say Putin is deliberately stalling to buy time and seize more Ukrainian territory.

Russia, which currently occupies around a fifth of Ukraine, accelerated its advances over the summer and has indicated it will achieve its war goals via military means if a peace deal is not possible.

Moscow claims five Ukrainian regions as its own, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Tens of thousands of people – including civilians – have been killed since Russia invaded, with towns and cities across the east and south of Ukraine left in ruins.

Millions of people have been forced to flee their homes in the biggest war in Europe since World War II.

A Russian air strike on the Donetsk region town of Kostiantynivka earlier Thursday killed five people, Ukrainian police said.

The town lies about eight kilometres (five miles) from the front line and is surrounded by Russian troops on three sides, according to DeepState.

Kyiv has been trying to hit back with long-range strikes on Russia’s vital oil sector, with the latest attack on Thursday morning triggering a fire at a refinery in the central Bashkortostan region, some 1,400 kilometres (870 miles) behind the front line.