Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on September 12, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 21, 2026
Three die in Sumy region as Zelenskiy says Russian offensive failed. Ukraine repels advances, while Russia captures a village in Dnipropetrovsk.
(Reuters) -An early morning Russian attack killed three people on Friday in northern Ukraine's Sumy region, a regional official reported, but President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Moscow's attempts to advance in the area had failed with heavy losses.
Russian forces are engaged in a long, grinding drive along the 1,000 km (620-mile) front through eastern Ukraine, but have also tried in recent months to gain a foothold in areas like Sumy, a border region next to Russia's Kursk region.
They have captured a string of villages near the border and subject larger towns, like the city of Sumy, to frequent shelling.
Sumy Regional Governor Oleh Hryhory said a 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) drone and missile attack killed three residents in or near Sumy and injured five.
But Zelenskiy, quoting Ukraine's top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said the Russian operation in the region "has been completely foiled by our forces."
"Fighting continues in the border areas of Sumy region, but the Russian grouping in the Sumy direction has lost its offensive capabilities as a result of the losses it has suffered," he wrote on Telegram.
Zelenskiy has reported successes in other operations in Sumy in recent weeks. He said Kyiv's forces were also actively repelling Russian troops in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, the two main areas on the front line.
Russia's Defence Ministry said its forces had captured a new village, Ternove, in Dnipropetrovsk region in the centre of Ukraine.
It was the second day in a row that Russia reported seizing a village in that region, adding to a list of several such localities in recent weeks. Ukraine has emphasised in public statements its efforts to keep Russians from gaining any ground there.
Ukraine's popular war blog DeepState, which uses open-source reports to track military positions, reported Russian gains near Ternove and at least one other village in the area.
But another military blogger reported that Ukrainian forces had taken back one village in the region from Russian troops.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski and Oleksandr Kozhukhar; Editing by Edmund Klamann)
A military offensive is a coordinated operation by armed forces to achieve a specific objective, often involving attacks on enemy positions to gain territory or strategic advantage.
Casualties in military terms refer to individuals who are killed, wounded, or missing as a result of military operations or combat.
Regional military movement refers to the repositioning of military forces within a specific geographic area, often in response to strategic needs or threats.
Shelling refers to the act of firing artillery shells at a target, typically used to inflict damage on enemy positions or infrastructure.
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