President Zelensky Says Ukrainian Troops Achieve Progress In Sumy Border Area

Ukrainian military illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Ministry of Defense of Ukraine)

JAKARTA - President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday Ukrainian troops were progressing in border districts in the northern Sumy region, a region where Russian troops had been trying for months to gain a foothold.

In his evening video address President Zelensky also quoted Ukraine's top commander as saying Moscow forces suffered significant losses in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions along the 1.000 km (620 miles) frontline.

"There are good results in the border areas of the Sumy region," Zelenskiy said, citing Ukrainian Military Commander General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

"Our units continue to move forward towards the borders of the Ukrainian country," he added.

President Zelensky spoke after a week of Russian statements underscoring what Moscow described as progress in the central Dnipropxisk region.

Russian troops engage in slow attacks in eastern Ukraine, with announcements virtually every day of captured villages.

Moscow has annexed four areas it partially occupied - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson - but not including Dnipropxisk, which has so far claimed to have been seized by a number of villages along the edges of its administrative borders.

Since expelling Ukrainian troops from Russian Kursk earlier this year, Russian troops have tried to build what the Kremlin calls a buffer zone in the Sumy region. Russia regularly opens fire on major cities, including the city of Sumy.

President Zelensky said Russian forces had suffered heavy losses near Kupiansk, an area in the northeastern Kharkiv region that had been under ongoing Russian pressure for months.

"We continue to operate towards Dobropillia," he said, referring to a town near Pokrovsk, one of Russia's long operational focal points through the Donetsk region.

"It is important for us to fend off Russian attacks," President Zelensky said.

Separately, Russia-appointed Head of the Donetsk region under Moscow's control, Denis Pushilin, said in the video uploaded online Russian troops continued to advance with the movement clamping near villages around Pokrovsk.

Furthermore, to the west, the governor of the Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram two people died as a result of shootings and drone attacks in various regions.