Moscow [Russia], October 10: Russian forces have continued their advance into Ukraine during the past week and claim to have seized eight villages along a battlefront now 1,250km (780 miles) long.
"At this time, the Russian armed forces fully hold the strategic initiative," Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of military commanders on Tuesday, which marked his 73rd birthday.
Recommended Stories Going from north to south, according to the Russian defence ministry, Ukraine ceded Otradnoye in the Kharkiv region, Mayskoye, Siversk Maly, Kuzminovka and Fedorovka in Donetsk, Verbovoye in Dnipropetrovsk and two villages in Zaporizhia, Novovasylivka and Novohryhorivka.
Putin claimed that Russian forces had seized almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine this year.
On September 25, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, independently assessed the real figure to be closer to 3,434sq km (1,325 square miles).
Putin also said Russian forces possessed two-thirds of Kupiansk, a city in the northern Kharkiv region. The ISW assessed the Russian occupation was at 14 percent of the city.
Putin's territorial claim for 2025 represents less than 1 percent of Ukraine and has come at great cost.
On Monday, "I Want to Live", a Ukrainian government initiative offering Russian soldiers safe passage if they surrender, said 281,550 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded or lost in action in the first eight months of 2025, based on leaked Russian military documents.
Of these, 86,744 were confirmed killed, but almost 34,000 were missing and possibly dead.
The losses were comparable with those of the Russian forces that overran Poland and Prussia in 1939, said the initiative, but "modern Russian generals . have been unable to capture Pokrovsk for several years." Want to come back to this article? Save it for later.
Al Jazeera was unable to verify the toll. Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly announce the number of troops killed among their armies.
Pokrovsk, with a pre-war population of 60,000, is a town in Donetsk that Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year.
Just 17km (11 miles) northwest of Pokrovsk lies Dobropillia, which Russian forces recently tried to capture as part of an enveloping movement from the north.
Instead, Ukraine's command has said, they got pushed back, losing 178sq km (69 square miles) and at least 3,500 personnel since the end of August.
From October 2 to 8, Russia struck major cities behind the front line, flying 1,523 drones and 93 missiles into Ukraine's airspace.
Five people were killed on Saturday when almost 500 drones disoriented air defences enough to let a ballistic missile and 13 cruise missiles through.
Two nights earlier, there had been another large combined strike.
"We managed to shoot down only half of the missiles," said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Ukraine recorded that it has destroyed more than 10,000 missiles and drones in September.
Source: Qatar Tribune