(Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces inflicted heavy losses during a counter-offensive in the eastern Donetsk region, the main theater of Ukraine's more than 3.5-year war.
Zelenskiy's story, based on a report from Ukraine's top commander, contrasted with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin's speech a day earlier to senior Russian officers, in which he said Moscow's armed forces had the strategic initiative in all frontline sectors.
Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that he spoke for almost an hour with top commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, with “particular focus on the Dobropillia operation, our counter-offensive”. He described the heavy losses in the area.
Ukraine has pointed to successes in Dobropillia, just north of the Pokrovsk logistics hub, one of the key targets in Russia's slow westward push through the Donetsk region.
Ukrainian forces, Zelenskiy said, were “defending us in all other directions,” specifically referring to Kupiansk, a largely destroyed city in northeastern Ukraine that came under heavy Russian attacks for months.
He also described conditions as “difficult” around Novopavlivka, further south in the Zaporizhia region, but said “our active defensive actions there are producing good results.”
Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports from either side.
Putin told senior officers on Tuesday in northwestern Russia, near the country's second-largest city St. Petersburg, that Russia had retaken nearly 5,000 square kilometers of land in Ukraine by 2025.
He said that Ukrainian troops were withdrawing in all sectors of the front and that although Kiev tried to attack deep into Russian territory, this would not help.
Russia's Defense Ministry said Wednesday it has taken control of the village of Novohryhorivka in the southern Zaporizhia region, the latest in a series of almost daily announcements of newly captured settlements.
The regional governor of Ukraine's southern Kherson region said Russian attacks killed three people in and around the city of the same name on Wednesday.
And the governor of the Sumy region, on the northern border with Russia, said three people were killed in Russian drone strikes in several districts.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
