Russia again claims to have taken an eastern Ukrainian region. The real picture is very different

By Tim Lister and Svitlana Vlasova

(CNN) — This week, for the third time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia claimed it fully occupied Ukraine’s Luhansk region.

The Russian military has held almost all of Luhansk – one of four eastern regions that Moscow has illegally sought to annex – since the first year of the conflict.

It’s unclear why Russia felt the need to announce – again – that its forces had “completed the liberation of the entire territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” as it calls the region.

Analysts note that the Russia Defense ministry has a habit of exaggerating advances when the frontlines are scarcely changing.

Russian gains in Ukraine slowed in the first three months of this year to about five kilometers (three miles) a day, compared to 11 kilometers in the first quarter of 2025, war monitors, including the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), report. And in some parts of the battlefield, the Ukrainians have made gains.

Ukraine scoffed at the claim that all of Luhansk was now under Russian control.

“The front line hasn’t moved much at all over the past six months. It’s like some kind of April Fools’ Day prank on their part,” said a Ukrainian military spokesman, Victor Tregubov.

Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, tasked with defending Luhansk, said the Russians had unsuccessfully launched 144 assault attempts on two villages in its attempts to complete the capture of the region.

On the same day as the defense ministry’s claim, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should have already ordered Ukrainian forces out of the entire Donbas region, calling the withdrawal necessary to end the “hot phase” of the war.

The Donbas includes Luhansk and Donetsk, about 20% of which Ukraine still holds.

“Kremlin claims in 2025 and 2026 about seizing (Luhansk) are aggrandizing miniscule changes on the front… in order to create the false impression that Russian forces are rapidly advancing on various sectors of the battlefield,” the ISW said after the latest Russian declaration.

Russia’s announcement was “aimed at portraying Ukrainian defenses as on the verge of collapse to drive the United States and Ukraine’s other partners into forcing Ukraine to unnecessarily cede territory that Russian forces are very unlikely to seize militarily in the medium term, if at all,” ISW concluded.

The “liberation” of Luhansk was previously claimed in 2022 and again last June, when the Kremlin-appointed governor of Luhansk, Leonid Pasechnik said “100%” of the region was now under the control of Russian forces.

In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia had only 0.13% of the region left to capture.

Over the past week, Ukrainian drones have struck Russian fuel tanks and ammunition depots some 100 kilometers (65 miles) from the front lines in Luhansk, as well as a Russian air defense system more than 130 kilometers from the region’s border, according to geolocated video.

The broader picture shows that Ukrainian forces made their most significant gains over the winter since an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in 2024.

Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Sunday that Ukrainian troops had won back 480 square kilometers in the southern regions of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk since January.

Ukrainian forces also retook at least 180 square kilometers in and around Kupyansk in the north in December and have largely held the gains, according to ISW.

Syrskyi said last week that Ukrainian forces are prioritizing counterattacks in areas where Russian forces are weakest.

“The enemy is currently playing by our rules. It is forced to adjust and concentrate its efforts where we are advancing,” Syrskyi said.

The goal is to force the Russian military to reallocate troops to different areas to respond to attacks, just as the Russians have tried to pull Ukrainian defenses in different directions.

Late last month, a well-known pro-Kremlin military blogger, Yuri Podolyaka – who has nearly three million subscribers on Telegram – expressed doubt over whether Russian forces can reverse an unfavorable battlefield situation in coming months and complained about “rather successful” Ukrainian counterattacks.

Ukrainian forces were “surpassing” Russian forces in their ability to adapt, Podolyaka said, and the military leadership in Moscow had failed to adapt to better Ukrainian interceptor drones.

Ukraine is also trying to take advantage of the scale of Russian losses.

“Russian losses this March have reached their highest level since the start of the war,” Zelensky claimed Friday.

“Our drone strikes alone resulted in 33,988 Russian servicemembers killed or seriously wounded, while artillery and other strikes eliminated another 1,363 Russian occupiers.”

“That means more than 35,000 Russian losses in just one month,” Zelensky said.

“Russian advances have significantly slowed as Russian forces continue to suffer personnel losses and increasingly rely on poorly trained and underequipped infantry to make gains,” ISW noted last week.

However, Ukraine is also facing deep personnel shortages along many parts of the frontline, and Zelensky has expressed concern that the war in the Middle East may lead to there being less US weaponry available, especially air defense missiles – hundreds of which have been sentto defend Gulf countries.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

The-CNN-Wire
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