Russia said Monday its forces had captured the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, a key military logistics hub, as well as the city of Vovchansk in the northeast.
The battlefield claims, announced by the Kremlin in a post on Telegram, ups the pressure on Kyiv as it seeks to bring the United States on side in fraught U.S.-led negotiations aimed at ending the war.
Pokrovsk, a road and rail hub in the Donetsk region that had around 60,000 inhabitants before the war, has been the target of an intense Russian campaign in recent months.
Ukraine sent reinforcements, including special forces troops, to the city last month in a bid to fend off Russia's attack.
But hundreds of Russian soldiers had managed to infiltrate the city.
Russia's chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov on Sunday "informed [President] Vladimir Putin of the liberation of the cities of Krasnoarmeysk and Vovchansk," the Kremlin said on Telegram, using the Russian name for Pokrovsk.
The Defense Ministry posted a video purportedly showing Russian soldiers raising their country's flag over Pokrovsk's central square.
The capture, if confirmed, would complicate Ukraine's supply lines elsewhere on the front and could give Russia a launchpad to advance farther north and west.
It would also put a nearby Ukrainian army garrison at risk of being encircled by Russian forces.
Vovchansk, located in the Kharkiv region, has been devastated by combat since May 2024.
Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov had called its capture an "important step toward victory."
An AFP analysis of data from the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) shows that the Russian army last month made its biggest advance in Ukraine since November 2024.
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