Kyiv, Moscow Both Claim to Take Ground in Ukraine’s Sumy Region

Over the weekend, Kyiv and Moscow both claimed that their forces had captured territory in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, which shares a border with western Russia.

In a video address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Kyiv’s forces in Sumy were achieving “good results” near the border.

“Our units are continuing to advance in the direction of Ukraine’s state border [with Russia],” he said on Sept. 14.

On the same day, Andrey Marochko, a Russian military analyst, claimed that Moscow’s forces within the past week had taken fresh ground east of Sumy’s village of Yunakivka.

Yunakivka sits roughly 3 miles west of the border with Russia’s Kursk region, from which Ukrainian forces were expelled earlier this year after a months-long cross-border incursion.

“Ukrainian militants are trying to counterattack in the area of Yunakivka,” Marochko told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency.

“Our troops are taking a number of measures, subsequently using this situation for their own purposes.

“A number of new positions have been taken in the eastern part of Yunakivka.”

According to Marochko, Russian forces in the area have also staged a “small advance” toward the village of Khotin, which lies roughly 15 miles to the west.

Last week, TASS cited Russian security sources as saying that troops from Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade had been “encircled in a forest belt south of Yunakivka.”

The news agency described Yunakivka as a “key logistical hub” for the Ukrainian military in Sumy.

The Epoch Times could not independently verify claims made by either side of the conflict, which began in 2022 when Russia invaded four regions of eastern Ukraine.

In 2024, Kyiv carried out a surprise cross-border offensive from Sumy into Russia’s Kursk region.

In April, the last Ukrainian forces were pushed out of Kursk, after which Moscow announced plans to create a “buffer zone” in Sumy to prevent future cross-border attacks.

In June, Zelenskyy said Russia had amassed more than 50,000 troops in the strategic border region.

In late 2022, Moscow announced it had annexed Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions, all of which it now regards as Russian Federation territory.

Although Russian forces are currently active in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Dnipropetrovsk, Moscow has not made any claim to the three Ukrainian regions.

Fight for Donetsk

In his video address, Zelenskyy also mentioned the Donetsk front line, where he said Ukrainian forces “continue to operate in the Dobropillia direction.”

“It is important that Russian assaults are being repelled by our boys,” he said.

In mid-August, Russian forces staged a sudden thrust toward Dobropillia, a small town in Donetsk located 14 miles north of the strategic city of Pokrovsk.

A longstanding Russian objective, Pokrovsk is a key Ukrainian transit hub and one of four fortified cities in Donetsk that together comprise what has been called Kyiv’s “fortress belt.”

Last month’s abrupt Russian thrust raised alarm bells in Kyiv that Pokrovsk stood on the verge of total encirclement.

At the time, Zelenskyy and pro-Ukrainian war bloggers confirmed that Russian forces had advanced several miles along the front line amid reports that Ukrainian troops were falling back to other positions.

Days later, however, Vadym Filashkin, Donetsk’s Kyiv-appointed regional governor, said the situation near Dobropillia had “stabilized.”

“The frontline is … holding,” he wrote on Telegram on Aug. 14.

A month later, on Sept. 14, Denis Pushilin, head of the Moscow-recognized Donetsk People’s Republic, said that “the salient made by our units in the Dobropillia direction remains.”

“The enemy is constantly trying to counterattack or attack individual positions … nevertheless, our units are there,” Pushilin said in remarks cited by TASS.

Reuters contributed to this report.