Image source, Russian Defense Ministry
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- Author, Paul Kirby
- Author's title, European Editor of Europe
The Ukrainian forces recognized that the Russian army arrived in the industrial region of Dnipropetrovsk, in the East of Ukraine, where it would be trying to establish itself.
“This is the first attack of such a large scale in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Viktor Trehubov, of the Operational-Strategic Group of Dnipro troops told BBC, although he clarified that his advance had been arrested.
Russia said throughout the summer that it had entered the area, while its forces try to enter Ukrainian territory from the Donetsk region.
In early June, Russian officials announced the beginning of an offensive in DNIPROPETROVSK, although the latest Ukrainian reports suggest that they barely transferred the regional border.
Any Russian advance on Dnipropetrovsk would be a hard blow to Ukrainian morals, since the diplomatic effort led by the United States to end war seems to weaken, despite the meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
The Deepstate Ukrainian Mapeo project reported that Russia had occupied two villages within the region: Zaporizke and Novohryhorivka.
However, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine denies it. The army “continues to control” Zaporizke, said the instance in a statement.
“Active hostilities are also developed in the village area of Novohryhorivka,” he added.
Image source, Getty Images
Moscow has not claimed Dnipropetrovsk, unlike Donetsk and the other Eastern Ukraine regions, but attacked its main cities, including the regional capital of DNIPRO.
Before the war, Dnipropetrovsk had a population of more than three million inhabitants and was the second most important heavy industry in Ukraine after Donbás, composed of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Although Russian forces slowly advance in the conquest of the Ukrainian territory and have suffered a large number of casualties, they made recent advances in Donetsk.
A small infantry group made a sudden advance of 10 km beyond the defensive lines of Ukraine near Dobropillia earlier this month, but the latest indications suggest that the advanced one stopped.
Putin's plans
It has been informed that Putin told Trump that he would be willing to end the war if Ukraine gave the areas of the Donetsk region that he still controls, but many Ukrainians believe that the Russian leader has other plans.
Colonel Pavlo Palisa, deputy director of the presidential office in Kyiv, warned the American press in June that Kremlin wanted to occupy all Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, which divides Ukraine by two.
The head of foreign policy of the European Union, Kaja Kallas, also warned that delivering Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace agreement was “a trap.”
“We forget that Russia has not made a single concession and that it is the aggressor here,” he told the BBC.
After meeting with Putin in Alaska and the Ukrainian President, Volodimir Zelensky, in Washington, Trump announced last week that preparations for a summit between both leaders had begun.
However, at the end of last week the hopes of an advance had vanished.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that the “agenda (for the summit) is not ready at all” and that no meeting was scheduled.
He also said that any debate on future security guarantees without Russian participation was “useless”, although it would be impossible for the West.
Image source, Getty Images
Security guarantees
Zelensky urged his Western allies to intensify efforts to agree on future security guarantees in case of an agreement.
The Ukrainian leader met on Tuesday in Kyiv with the Chief of the British Armed Forces, Admiral Tony Radakin, and the spokesman of the British Prime Minister said that the United Kingdom would be ready to deploy troops on the land once the hostilities were finished.
The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that the security guarantees for Ukraine would allow, above all, that the Ukrainian army defended his country in the long term.
Merz said that Zelensky had made it clear that he was willing to meet with Putin and that it was now Moscow's turn: “If the Russian president takes the end of the slaughter seriously, he will accept the offer.”
Image source, Getty Images
Ukraine, on the other hand, announced that men between 18 and 22 can travel abroad, which is flexibility in the law that demanded authorization to all children under 60 years to leave the country.
The Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yulia Svydenko, said that the change also included those who were in other countries, which means that they could now return to Ukraine and go out again if they wanted it.
A growing number of Ukrainian parents send their teenage children abroad before they turn 18. “We want the Ukrainians to maintain their links with Ukraine as far as possible,” said Svydenko.
Men between 18 and 22 are not subject to mandatory military service, whose minimum age is 25 years after their reduction last year.
It is estimated that 5.6 million Ukrainian men currently live abroad.
