Ukraine still controls only a small percentage of the Donetsk region, a Moscow official claims

The head of Ukraine's Donetsk region, Denis Pushilin, installed by Moscow to lead the occupied parties, told Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a meeting broadcast on state television on Tuesday, that Ukraine currently controls only about 15-17% of the region, writes Reuters.

Moscow claims the entire Donetsk region as part of its territory and says it is protected by Russia's nuclear umbrella.

Ukraine says it will never recognize Russian control over parts of Donetsk and other Ukrainian regions partially or fully controlled by Moscow's troops.

Russia – or the rulers installed in charge of the occupied Ukrainian territories – rarely provide specific details about the exact area of ​​territory it controls in Ukraine.

Figures provided by Pusilin indicate that Russia controls between 83% and 85% of the Donetsk region, and thus more than 90% of the larger Donbas province, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Ukrainian army claims the almost complete liberation of another region

Instead, the head of the Operational Command of the Ukrainian General Staff, General Oleksandr Komarenko, said on Tuesday that the Ukrainian armed forces had managed to recover almost all the territory that the Russian army had captured in the Dnipropetrovsk region.

“Almost the entire territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region has been liberated. Three small villages remain to be liberated, and two more need to be cleared (of Russian soldiers remaining there),” the general told the RBK-Ukraine portal.

Komarenko also said that in the operations that allowed the Russians to be expelled from some of the villages they controlled in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine recovered a total of more than 400 square kilometers.

The country's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently announced the recapture by his troops of the same area of ​​territory along the Oleksandrivka front line in southeastern Ukraine and where the part of the Dnipropetrovsk region where fighting is taking place is located, EFE and Agerpres agencies note.

According to information provided this month by the Ukrainian military, Ukraine gained more territory than it lost in February 2026, something that had not happened since the summer of 2024, when Kiev's forces launched a cross-border operation in Russia's Kursk region, where they came to control more than 1,000 square kilometers.

Last year, Russia seized several towns in the Dnipropetrovsk region, bordering the eastern and southern regions of Donetsk and Zaporizhia, respectively, where Kremlin forces control at least two-thirds of the territory.