Ukraine’s Armed Forces command has questioned Russia’s claims of purported gains in its offensive in recent months.
“Russian forces have not secured full control of any major city,” despite statements to the contrary by Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Ukraine’s General Staff said Sunday, August 31.
According to Ukraine’s command, Gerasimov tried to “pass off wishful thinking as reality” and spread false information about the “results of the spring-summer 2025 campaign,” because Russia’s latest “seasonal” offensive ended “with virtually nothing.”
“The figures presented by the occupiers for captured territory and settlements are significantly inflated,” the General Staff stressed.
Attempts by Russian forces to seize new Ukrainian territory have brought heavy losses, the statement added.
“Since the start of the year, in senseless fighting in Kharkiv, Luhansk and Donetsk regions, Russians have lost nearly 210,000 troops killed and wounded; 2,174 armored fighting vehicles, 1,201 tanks, 7,303 artillery systems and 157 multiple rocket launchers have been destroyed or damaged,” Ukraine’s military command wrote.
Gerasimov’s claims about “security zones” in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions are “an attempt to hide failed operations that left the enemy at an impasse and cost tens of thousands of casualties,” Ukraine’s General Staff said. “Ukrainian forces are conducting active operations in Sumy region, where they liberated Kondrativka and Andriivka, and are pushing the enemy out of other border settlements,” the General Staff added, now in its fourth year defending against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
Ukraine’s command also sharply criticized Russia’s assertions of “precision strikes” on supposed “military targets” in the neighboring country. “The price of this bragging is known to thousands of peaceful Ukrainian civilians who lose their homes, relatives and loved ones every day. Wherever a Russian ‘Iskander’ lands, that is where a ‘UAF command post’ or a ‘foreign mercenary base’ is said to have been,” the General Staff wrote.
A day earlier, Russia’s Defense Ministry posted a statement by Gerasimov on its official Telegram channel claiming a successful offensive in Ukraine.
He claimed the Russian army occupies 99.7% of Luhansk region and 79% of Donetsk region, as well as 74% of Zaporizhzhia and 76% of Kherson regions, and that since March 2025 Russia has seized 149 settlements and more than 3,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory.
