Russia Claims Control of Novomykolaivka Village Amid Ongoing Conflict in Ukraines Dnipropetrovsk Region

On Saturday, Russia announced that it had taken control of a new village in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, claiming that its troops reached the area at the beginning of July.

The Russian defense ministry reported that the village of Novomykolaivka, located near the border with the Donetsk region—an area heavily engaged in combat—has been seized.

However, AFP has not been able to verify this assertion.

DeepState, an online military mapping project managed by Ukrainian analysts, indicated that the village remains under the control of Kyiv.

Russian forces significantly outnumber Ukrainian troops in this region and are better equipped. They have been executing offensive operations for several months and have made progress along the eastern front.

In late August, Ukraine publicly acknowledged the entry of Russian soldiers into the Dnipropetrovsk region, where Moscow had reported advancements earlier that month.

Currently, the Russian military controls roughly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory.

The Kremlin is insisting on Ukraine’s withdrawal from the eastern Donbas region as a condition for ending hostilities, a demand that Kyiv has rejected.

The Dnipropetrovsk region is not among the five Ukrainian regions—Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea—that Moscow has claimed as part of Russia.

On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, aims to «occupy all of Ukraine» and will continue until this objective is fulfilled, even if Kyiv were to agree to territorial concessions.

In response, the Kremlin announced on Friday that peace talks with Kyiv are currently «on pause,» following unsuccessful attempts in recent months to diplomatically resolve the conflict that erupted after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.