Russia has captured almost 5,000 sq km in Ukraine, Putin claims

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that Moscow’s forces had seized nearly 5,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory this year and maintained full strategic control of the battlefield.

Russia's 2025 gains would amount to nearly 1% of Ukraine's land area, and the country controls nearly 20% in total.

Putin, addressing a meeting with Russian top military commanders on his 73rd birthday, said Ukrainian forces were retreating in all sectors of the front. He said Kyiv was trying to strike deep into Russian territory, but it would not help to change the situation in the more than 3 1/2-year-old war.

"At this time, the Russian armed forces fully hold the strategic initiative," Putin told the meeting in northwestern Russia near Russia's second-largest city of St Petersburg, according to a Kremlin transcript.

"This year, we have liberated nearly 5,000 square km of territory - 4,900 - and 212 localities."

Ukrainian forces, he said, "are retreating throughout the line of combat contact, despite attempts at fierce resistance."

Russia's Defence Ministry on Tuesday reported the capture of two more villages along the front, which Ukraine's top commander says now extends over 1,250 km (775 miles).

Ukraine's military in August dismissed Russia's recent offensives as a failure, with Moscow's forces failing to capture a single major Ukrainian city this year.

Ukrainian accounts say Kyiv's troops have made gains in the Donetsk region, particularly around Dobropillia, a town near the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has also said Ukrainian forces have regained ground in the border Sumy region, where Russia has established a foothold.

Russian Army General Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff of Russia's armed forces, told the meeting of top commanders that the Russian troops were "advancing in practically all directions." Ukrainian forces, he said, were focused on slowing the Russian advance.

Gerasimov, overall commander of Russia's war effort, said the heaviest fighting was gripping Pokrovsk and areas towards Dnipropetrovsk.

Moscow's troops were moving on the key cities of Siversk and Kostyantynivka in the main theatre of the Donetsk region.

Gerasimov said they were clearing Ukrainian forces from the city of Kupiansk, under Russian attack for months in Ukraine's northeast, and were moving forward in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions further south.

They were also progressing in setting up buffer zones in Sumy and Kharkiv regions in the north.

In his remarks to the meeting, Putin said Russia's objectives remained the same as when he launched its "special military operation" in February 2022, saying it was aimed at "demilitarising and denazifying" its smaller neighbour.