KYIV, Ukraine — Russian troops have seized control of four villages in Ukraine’s Sumy region, a border area in the northeast that has come under intensifying pressure from Moscow’s forces, regional officials said Monday.
The villages — Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka, and Zhuravka — are now under Russian occupation, according to Sumy Regional Governor Oleh Hryhorov, who confirmed the developments in a statement posted to Facebook. The villages lie just inside the Ukrainian border and had previously been evacuated due to the threat of hostilities.
“The enemy is continuing attempts to advance with the aim of setting up a so-called ‘buffer zone’,” Hryhorov wrote.
Despite the Russian gains, Ukrainian forces are “keeping the situation under control” and inflicting precise fire damage on advancing units, the governor added. Combat is ongoing in surrounding areas, including Volodymyrivka and Bilovodiv, both of which Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed to have captured earlier Monday.
The development follows reports by Russian military bloggers and state media in recent days describing tactical progress inside Sumy, a region that has weathered frequent airstrikes since the full-scale invasion began in 2022. Russia appears to be intensifying operations along the northeastern border, echoing similar tactics used during earlier incursions into Ukraine’s Kharkiv region.
Amid the surge in fighting, Ukraine’s State Emergency Services reported that one person was killed Monday in a Russian artillery strike west of the newly occupied villages. Civilian areas in Sumy continue to endure sporadic shelling as the front line pushes further into Ukrainian territory.
The Sumy region, which borders Russia’s Kursk region, was the launch point for a major Ukrainian cross-border raid in August 2023. While Moscow claims it has expelled Ukrainian forces from Kursk, Kyiv asserts that its units remain active in the area.
DeepState, a well-known Ukrainian military analysis platform, noted over the weekend that Russian forces had taken up positions along several border settlements in Sumy — a first in the nearly 27-month conflict. On Monday, the blog also reported fresh Russian attacks further east near Vovchansk, in Kharkiv region, where Russia staged a large-scale offensive in May 2024.
The reported gains in Sumy raise renewed concerns about Russia’s strategy to secure a defensive cordon inside Ukraine, a goal President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly invoked as a condition for future ceasefire negotiations.
Just last month, a Russian missile strike on the city of Sumy — the regional capital — left 35 people dead during Palm Sunday services, underscoring the persistent threat to civilian life far from the front lines.
As the battle for Ukraine’s borderlands intensifies, military analysts warn that further incursions into lightly fortified northern territories could stretch Ukraine’s already burdened defenses, which are concentrated in the heavily contested Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions to the south.
