Zelenskiy: Ukrainian troops advancing in Sumy border areas

(Patria) - President Volodymyr Zelenskiy stated on Sunday that Ukrainian forces have advanced in the border areas of the northern Ukrainian Sumy region, Reuters reported.

He, speaking in his nightly video address, also quoted the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army as saying that Russian forces have suffered significant losses in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions along the 1,000 km front line.

Zelenskiy spoke after a week of Russian statements that highlighted what Moscow described as gains in the central Dnipropetrovsk region.

Russian troops are slowly advancing across eastern Ukraine, with almost daily announcements of village captures. Moscow has annexed four regions it partially occupies - Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson - but not Dnipropetrovsk, where it has so far announced capturing a number of villages along the edge of its administrative border.

"There are good results in the border areas of the Sumy region," Zelenskiy said, referring to Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

"Our units continue to advance in the direction of Ukraine's state border."

Since Ukrainian forces were driven out of Russia's Kursk Oblast earlier this year, Russian troops have attempted to establish what the Kremlin calls a buffer zone in Sumy Oblast. Russia regularly shells larger cities, including the city of Sumy.

Zelenskiy said Russian forces suffered significant losses near Kupiansk, an area in the northeastern Kharkiv Oblast that has been under constant Russian pressure for months.

"We continue to operate in the direction of Dobropillia," he said, referring to a town near Pokrovsk, one of the central points of Russia's long-standing advance through Donetsk Oblast.

"It is important that our guys are repelling Russian attacks," he said.

Denis Pushilin, the Russian-appointed head of the Moscow-controlled parts of Donetsk Oblast, said in a video posted online that Russian forces were pressing near villages around Pokrovsk.

Further west, the governor of Kherson Oblast, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram that two people were killed in shelling and drone attacks in different parts of the region.