Zelenskyy claims Russia seeks to cross into Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that the Russian army seeks to cross into his country’s Dnipropetrovsk region as its military offensive continues, state news agency Ukrinform reported on Wednesday.

“They will do everything to cross the administrative border of the Dnipropetrovsk region. They want it. So far they have not succeeded,” Zelenskyy told journalists in a briefing on Tuesday.

Zelenskyy said Russian forces also seek to take control of the city of Pokrovsk, a key front in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, arguing that the region’s capture, as well as the country’s easternmost Luhansk region, remain Moscow’s strategic goals since 2014.

He said he believed Russia intends to create a 10-kilometer (6.2-mile) “security buffer zone” in the northeastern Sumy region, where Governor Oleh Hryhorov said four villages were taken under Russian control.

“Now they are accumulating troops in the Sumy direction. More than 50,000,” Zelenskyy said, adding that they have taken measures to prevent an offensive in the north.

He also dismissed ideas about a potential Russian offensive in the southern Kherson region.

Zelenskyy said he considers Türkiye, the Vatican, and Switzerland as the three most realistic venues for future direct peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, arguing that such negotiations in Belarus were “simply impossible.”

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the creation of a "security buffer zone" along the border with Ukraine.

Türkiye facilitated the first direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv in three years in Istanbul on May 16, where the two sides agreed to a large-scale exchange of prisoners involving a total of 1,000 people from each side. Putin and US President Donald Trump later agreed for talks on ceasefire and preparation of a memorandum for a potential peace deal.