Russia’s defense ministry said Russian forces have captured the town of Makiivka in the eastern region of Luhansk, in its daily briefing for Sept. 29.
Officials in Kyiv have yet to comment on the Russian claims, which The Epoch Times could not independently verify.
If true, the fall of Makiivka (Makeyevka in Russian) would bring Moscow one step closer to exerting control over the entire Donbas region, where Russian forces have registered significant gains in recent weeks.
Control of Donbas has remained a key Russian objective since Moscow invaded eastern Ukraine in early 2022.
Seven months after its initial invasion, Moscow effectively annexed Luhansk and Donetsk (which together compose the Russian-speaking Donbas region), along with the southeastern areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
On Sept. 30, Russian President Vladimir Putin marked the second anniversary of the annexations, which he described as a “momentous event.”
“All our goals will be achieved,” the Russian leader said in a video address.
Makiivka sits some 35 miles southeast of Kupiansk, the administrative capital of Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, where Kyiv claims that its forces beat back a “massive” Russian attack late last week.
According to the ministry, Ukrainian drone operators in Kupiansk “destroyed and damaged 40 Russian vehicles,” including 13 tanks and more than a dozen infantry fighting vehicles.
Kyiv claimed another success on the morning of Sept. 30, when its military said that Ukrainian air defenses had successfully defended the capital from multiple Russian drone attacks.
Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said that all incoming drones—he did not give a number—had been downed by Ukrainian air defenses or neutralized by electronic jamming systems.
Writing on the Telegram messaging platform, Popko said the five-hour attack had failed to cause human or material damage, according to initial assessments.
Russia’s defense ministry did not mention the reported drone attack in its daily briefing for Sept. 30.
Russians ‘Mopping Up’ Kursk
Over the weekend, Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had foiled renewed attempts by Ukrainian troops and armored vehicles to enter Russia’s western Kursk region.In a statement posted on Telegram, the ministry claimed that Russian troops backed by aircraft and artillery had foiled multiple Ukrainian attempts to enter the region near the border village of Novy Put.
According to the ministry, 50 Ukrainian troops were injured or killed—and at least one tank was destroyed—during the attempted incursions.
Novy Put is roughly 50 miles west of Sudzha, a key transit hub for Russian natural gas.
Early last month, Ukrainian troops and armor poured into Kursk, which shares a roughly 150-mile-long border with northeastern Ukraine.
In the first two weeks of the cross-border offensive, Ukrainian forces established control over dozens of Russian settlements, including Sudzha.
Since then, Moscow has waged a fierce counter-offensive to expel Ukrainian forces from Russian territory.
Last week, Apty Alaudinov, a top Russian defense ministry official, said Ukraine had lost “most of the resources” it had sent into Kursk.
Nevertheless, he went on to concede that it would likely take a “couple of months” to fully expel the invaders from the border region.
On Sept. 30, Alaudinov said that Russian forces in Kursk were now in the process of “mopping up” remaining Ukrainian troops and equipment.
“We are slowly pushing the enemy out of our territory,” he told Russia’s TASS news agency.
According to Moscow, Ukraine has lost upward of 18,000 troops in Kursk, along with scores of tanks and hundreds of armored vehicles, since Kyiv began its cross-border offensive almost two months ago.
The Epoch Times could not independently verify battlefield claims made by either side.
