Ukraine has halted Russian troop advance in Sumy region, says Zelensky

KYIV – President Volodymyr Zelensky said on June 14 that Ukrainian forces had recaptured Andriivka village in north-eastern Sumy region as part of a drive to expel Russian forces from the area.

Mr Zelensky has in the past week focused on what he describes as a drive to push out Russian forces from the Sumy region, with border areas gripped by heavy fighting. He said Russia has amassed 53,000 troops in the area.

“Based on recent developments, our special thanks go to the soldiers of the 225th Separate Assault Regiment – for offensive operations in the Sumy region and the liberation, in particular, of Andriivka,” he said in his nightly video address.

He also noted “successful actions” near Pokrovsk, for months a focus of Russian attacks in their slow advance on the eastern front, and “strong results” near Kupiansk, an area in north-eastern Ukraine that has come under heavy Russian pressure.

In remarks released for publication earlier on June 14, Mr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces had stopped Russian troops advancing in Sumy region and were battling to regain control along the border. 

“We are levelling the position. The fighting there is along the border. You should understand that the enemy has been stopped there. And the maximum depth at which the fighting takes place is 7km from the border,” he said.

Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports.

Russia’s troops have been focusing their assaults in the eastern Donetsk region, with Pokrovsk a particular target. But since the start of June, they have intensified their attacks in the north-east, announcing plans to create a so-called “buffer zone” in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said on June 14 that its forces had seized the village of Zelenyi Kut, south-west of Pokrovsk.

The Russian war in Ukraine is in its fourth year, but it has intensified in recent weeks.

Ukraine conducted an audacious drone attack in June that took out multiple aircraft inside Russia and also hit the bridge connecting Russia to Ukraine’s occupied Crimean Peninsula using underwater explosives.

Moscow ramped up its air assaults after the attack.

Maintaining defensive lines

Mr Zelensky said Ukrainian troops had maintained their defensive lines along more than 1,000km of the front line.

He also dismissed Moscow’s claims that Russian troops had crossed the administrative border into the central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk.

He said Russia was sending small assault groups “to get one foot on the administrative border” and make a picture or a video, but these attacks were repelled.

The popular Ukrainian military blog DeepState, which relies on open-source data, said Ukrainian troops had repelled a Russian attack in the area but also reported Russian advances in other areas, including Pokrovsk.

Dnipropetrovsk borders three regions that are partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia currently controls about one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Mr Zelensky acknowledged that Ukraine was unable to regain all of its territory by military force and reiterated his pleas for stronger sanctions on Russia to force Moscow into talks to end the war.

Two rounds of peace talks in Istanbul produced few results that could lead to a ceasefire and a broader peace deal. The two sides agreed only to exchange prisoners of war.

Several swops have already been conducted in June, and Mr Zelensky said he expected them to continue until June 20 or 21.

In separate remarks made on communications platform Telegram on June 14, he said that a new group of Ukrainian prisoners of war had come home as part of another swop with Russia.

“We continue to take our people out of Russian captivity. This is the fourth exchange in a week,” he wrote on his personal account.

Ukrainian officials responsible for exchanging prisoners said the vast majority of the soldiers released in the exchange had been held captive since 2022 with many captured during the defence of Mariupol.

The officials said Kyiv had, meanwhile, received the bodies of 1,200 of its soldiers killed in the war with Russia. The bodies were handed over to Ukraine on June 13.

Russian state media, citing sources, reported that Moscow had not received any of its war dead back from Kyiv. REUTERS