Russia says captured two more east Ukraine settlements

Russia said on Sunday (July 6, 2025) it had captured another two settlements in east Ukraine, one in the Donetsk region and one in the Kharkiv region.

Ukraine did not immediately comment on Russia’s claims.

Moscow has been grinding forward on the front line for over a year, pressing its advantage against overstretched and outmanned Ukrainian troops.

On Sunday, Russia said it had captured the village of Piddubne in Donetsk and Sobolivka in Kharkiv.

Piddubne was home to around 500 people before the conflict and lies just 7 km from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region.

The Sobolivka village lies some 3 km west of the town of Kupiansk, outside of areas Russia claims it is holding, according to battlefield maps by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

In two separate Telegram posts, the Russian defence ministry said its army units had “liberated” the settlements of Poddubnoye and Sobolevka, using Russian spellings for the localities.

The Russian military accelerated its advances for a third consecutive month in June.

Its territorial gains for that month were the biggest since November last year, according to an AFP analysis of ISW data.

Russia and Ukraine struck each other with hundreds of drones on Sunday, throwing Russian air travel in disarray, days after Moscow launched its largest aerial assault in the more than 3-year-old war.

Photos circulating on social media showed crowds huddling at Russian airports including key international hubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg, as hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled due to Ukrainian drone strikes on Saturday and overnight, according to Russia’s Transport Ministry.

The flight disruptions hit Moscow’s Sheremetyevo and St. Petersburg’s main Pulkovo airports. Other airports in western and central Russia also faced disruptions.

Russian air defenses shot down 120 Ukrainian drones during the nighttime attacks, and 39 more before 2 p.m. Moscow time (11 GMT) on Sunday, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. It did not clarify how many had hit targets, or how many had been launched in total.

Early on Sunday, Ukrainian drones injured two civilians in Russia’s Belgorod region near the border, its Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said Sunday.