Ukraine rejects Russian army chief's claim of 92 settlements captured since September

Russia and Ukraine have given sharply different accounts of the fighting since 1 September.

Russia’s chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, told President Vladimir Putin on Friday 16 October that Russian forces had taken control of 92 settlements and more than 1,800 square kilometres since 1 September, Interfax reported. According to Ukraine’s General Staff and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), he said the captured places included Dobropillia and Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region. Russia’s Defence Ministry repeated several of these claims.

On Saturday, Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Major Andriy Kovalev said Gerasimov’s report was built on “outright lies, manipulation and exaggeration”, Ukrinform reported. “This is not true,” he said, adding that Ukrainian forces had freed more territory since the start of autumn than Russia had captured. He said Dobropillia, Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka and Velykomykhailivka remained under Ukrainian control and that fighting continued in Kostiantynivka. He said the front line was 22km from the city of Zaporizhzhia, not 5km from its outskirts as Gerasimov said.

The ISW, a US-based research group that tracks the war, said open-source evidence was consistent with Ukraine’s account. It estimated that Russian forces had a net loss of 122 square kilometres since 1 September.

Neither side’s claims can be independently verified.

Background

Russia’s main offensive is in the eastern Donetsk region, where it is trying to capture Ukraine’s remaining “fortress belt” cities, including Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. Ukraine says its counteroffensive, Operation Vivaldi, has retaken villages there this autumn. The rival claims come as US-led efforts to arrange talks continue. Putin said this week that a planned Russian “security zone” inside Ukraine would not be up for negotiation.