Russia advances into central Ukraine amid row over bodies

Russia said on Sunday its forces had advanced to the edge of the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk amid a public row between Moscow and Kyiv over peace negotiations and the return of thousands of bodies of soldiers who fell in the war.

The US believes that Putin’s threatened retaliation against Ukraine over its drone attack last weekend has not happened yet in earnest and is likely to be a significant, multi-pronged strike.

Amid talk of peace, the war is stepping up with Russian forces grabbing more territory in Ukraine and Kyiv unfurling high-profile drone and sabotage attacks on Russia’s nuclear-capable bomber fleet and, according to Moscow, on railways.

Russia, which controls a little under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, has taken more than 190 square km (73 square miles) of the Sumy region of eastern Ukraine in less than a month, according to pro-Ukrainian open source maps.

Now, according to the Russian defence ministry, units of the 90th Tank Division of the Central Grouping of Russian forces have reached the western frontier of Ukraine’s Donetsk region and are attacking the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk region.

“The enemy does not abandon its intentions to enter the Dnipropetrovsk region,” Ukraine’s Southern Defence Forces said on Telegram.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said the Dnipropetrovsk offensive showed that if Ukraine did not want to accept the reality of Russia’s territorial gains in peace talks then Moscow’s forces would advance further.

The pro-Ukrainian Deep State map showed Russian forces very close to the Dnipropetrovsk region, which had a population of more than 3 million before the war., and advancing on the city of Kostyantynivka in the Donetsk region from several directions.

A Ukrainian military spokesman, Dmytro Zaporozhets, said that Russian forces were trying to “build a bridgehead for an attack” on Kostyantynivka, an important logistical hub for the Ukrainian army.

Russia on Saturday accused Ukraine of delaying the swap of prisoners of war and return of the bodies of 12,000 dead soldiers, though Ukraine denied those claims.