Zelenskyy prepared for contact with U.S. envoys on Wednesday after Russia asserted full control of Ukraine’s Luhansk region, setting up an immediate contrast between battlefield claims and Kyiv’s response.
In a statement, Russia’s Defense Ministry said that “Units of the Group of Forces West have completed the liberation of the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Ukraine’s Joint Forces spokesperson, Viktor Trehubov, told The Associated Press by phone that there were “no changes to report” in the region, adding that Ukrainian forces “only hold small patches there” and that the positions had been held by the 3rd brigade for a long time.
The AP report said it was not possible to independently verify either side’s battlefield claims, and noted that Russian claims of progress have previously contained discrepancies. The conflict has also included competing messaging from authorities appointed to occupied areas, including a prior announcement last June from the Moscow-appointed head of Luhansk that the region had been fully captured.
Ahead of the U.S. diplomatic efforts that have been ongoing for about a year and are now in their fifth year, Zelenskyy said he would hold a video call later Wednesday with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, envoys associated with President Donald Trump’s administration. In the same context, the AP report said U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to stop the fighting have so far failed to break a deadlock on key sticking points, with Washington’s attention currently focused on the Iran war.
Zelenskyy also told Ukrainians that front-line combat remains intense amid a Russian spring offensive. On X, he said the situation on the frontline was “currently quite tense” and that “the Russian army is trying to step up its assault activity,” while claiming Ukrainian forces are holding their ground.
Russia has demanded Ukrainian troops withdraw from four eastern regions it claims to have annexed—Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—as a condition for a peace deal, according to the AP report. Ukraine has rejected that demand. The report also referenced that in October Putin said Ukrainian forces still held 0.13% of Luhansk, while also noting that Russia annexed the regions in September 2022 but had not fully controlled them.
The Institute for the Study of War, the AP report said, assessed that Ukrainian tactics are likely disrupting Russia’s efforts to advance with its larger army. The Washington-based think tank also said late Tuesday that in recent months Ukrainian forces made “their most significant gains on the battlefield” since an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024 and a 2023 counteroffensive.
Alongside the battlefield dispute, the AP report described continuing strikes across Ukraine. It said a Russian drone strike killed four people in Ukraine’s central Cherkasy region on Wednesday, according to regional governor Ihor Taburets. It also reported that drones damaged sites in western Ukraine near the Polish border early Wednesday, including an industrial facility in Lutsk, and that mayor Ihor Polishchuk said a postal sorting center and food distribution site were damaged while falling debris set fire to a residential building; emergency services reported no casualties.
Ukraine’s air force said it downed 298 drones—mostly Iranian-designed Shahed models and cheaper variants—in overnight attacks launched from multiple areas in western Russia and Crimea, the AP report said. It also said 20 drones hit 11 sites nationwide. Zelenskyy added in an X post that Ukraine has developed advance drone technology to counter Russian barrages and is offering to help Gulf countries block Iranian drone attacks, saying Ukraine is engaged in “substantive cooperation” with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar and that officials are also in consultations with Jordan and in contact with Bahrain, Kuwait, and Iraq.