This week, for the third time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia claimed complete occupation of Ukraine’s Luhansk region.
Since the first year of the conflict, Russian forces have occupied almost all of Luhansk, one of four eastern regions that the Russian government aims to illegally annex.
It is unclear why Russia felt the need to announce again that its military had “completed the liberation of all territory in the region called the Luhansk People’s Republic.”
Analysts say the Russian Defense Ministry has a habit of exaggerating progress when little has changed on the front.
War monitoring groups such as the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) have reported that Russian incursions in Ukraine have slowed to about 5 kilometers (3 miles) per day in the first three months of this year, compared with 11 kilometers in the first quarter of 2025. And in some parts of the battlefield, Ukrainian forces achieved victory.
Ukraine has scoffed at claims that all of Luhansk is now under Russian control.
“The front lines have not moved at all for the past six months. It’s like an April Fool’s prank,” Ukrainian military spokesman Viktor Tregubov said.
Ukraine’s III Corps, which is tasked with defending Luhansk, announced that Russian forces had attempted 144 unsuccessful attacks on two villages to complete their occupation of the area.
On the same day as the Defense Ministry’s assertion, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy should have already ordered Ukrainian troops to withdraw from the entire Donbas region, arguing that the withdrawal was necessary to end the “hot phase” of the war.
Donbass includes Luhansk and Donetsk, about 20% of which is still held by Ukraine.
“The Kremlin’s claims to capture (Luhansk) in 2025 and 2026 magnify small changes on the front to create the false impression that Russian forces are rapidly advancing in different areas of the battlefield,” ISW said after the latest Russian declaration.
Russia’s announcement “is aimed at portraying Ukraine’s defenses as on the verge of collapse and inciting the United States and other Ukrainian partners to unnecessarily cede territory to Ukraine that is highly unlikely, if at all, to be captured militarily by Russian forces in the medium term,” ISW concluded.
Luhansk’s “liberation” has previously been claimed for 2022, with Kremlin-appointed Luhansk governor Leonid Pashechnik saying in June last year that “100%” of the region was now under Russian military control.
In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Russia had only 0.13% of territory left to occupy.
Over the past week, Ukrainian drones have struck Russian fuel tanks and ammunition depots about 100 kilometers (65 miles) from the front lines in Luhansk, as well as Russian air defense systems more than 130 kilometers (130 kilometers) from the region’s borders, according to geolocation videos.
The overall picture shows that the Ukrainian military has made its biggest military gains this winter since invading Russia’s Kursk region in 2024. Their biggest advance was in the south, where they captured about 400 square kilometers of Zaporizhia, another region claimed by Russia.
According to ISW, Ukrainian forces have recaptured at least 180 square kilometers in and around northern Kupyansk in December and are holding on to most of their gains.
Ukraine’s military’s top commander, General Oleksandr Shirushkyi, said last week that the Ukrainian military is prioritizing counterattacks in areas where Russian forces are weakest.
“The enemy is now playing by our rules. He is forced to adjust and focus his efforts where we are advancing,” Shirschiky said.
The aim is to force the Russian military to redeploy troops to another region in response to an attack, just as Russia is trying to pull Ukraine’s defense forces in another direction.
Late last month, Yuri Podlyaka, a prominent pro-Kremlin military blogger with about 3 million Telegram subscribers, expressed doubts about whether the Russian military would be able to reverse the unfavorable battlefield situation in the coming months, complaining that the Ukrainian counterattack had been “quite successful.”
Podryaka said the Ukrainian military “outperformed” the Russian military in its ability to adapt, but Moscow’s military leadership was unable to adapt to better Ukrainian interceptor drones.
Ukraine is also trying to take advantage of the magnitude of Russia’s losses.
President Zelenskiy claimed on Friday that “Russia’s losses in March of this year reached the highest level since the beginning of the war.”
“Our drone strikes alone killed or seriously injured 33,988 Russian military personnel, and artillery fire and other attacks eliminated a further 1,363 Russian occupiers.”
“This means more than 35,000 casualties on the Russian side in just one month,” Zelenskiy said.
“Russian advances have slowed significantly as the Russian military continues to suffer personnel losses and increasingly relies on poorly trained and poorly equipped infantry to reap benefits,” ISW noted last week.
But Ukraine also faces severe personnel shortages in many front-line areas, and President Zelenskiy expressed concern that wars in the Middle East could reduce available U.S. weapons, particularly air defense missiles, of which hundreds are being sent to defend Gulf states.
