Fighting under way, Ukrainian military confirms, in central oblast that is not part of Russia’s illegal annexation. What we know on day 1,281
Ukraine acknowledged for the first time on Tuesday that Russia’s army had entered the Dnipropetrovsk region, a central administrative area previously spared from intense fighting. “Yes, they have entered, and fighting is ongoing as of now,” said Viktor Tregubov, a spokesperson for Ukrainian forces in Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city. Russian forces have slowly gained ground in costly battles for largely devastated areas in eastern and southern Ukraine, normally with few inhabitants or intact buildings left.
Separately, Ukraine’s military general staff rejected Moscow’s claims to have fully captured the villages of Zaporizke and Novogeorgiivka just inside Dnipropetrovsk oblast. But battlefield monitor DeepState, which has close ties to Ukraine’s military, said on Tuesday that Russia had “occupied” them and was “consolidating its positions [and] accumulating infantry for a further advance”. Dnipropetrovsk is not one of the five Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea – that Moscow has illegally annexed as Russian territory.
