The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, announced this Friday that Russian forces have completely taken control of Kostiantynivka, a Ukrainian city in the Donetsk region considered a key defensive stronghold in the Donbas, according to the EFE agency.
«Kostyantynivka has been completely taken. The city is now entirely under our control,» Peskov stated to the press after a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and the head of the Russian General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, during which he provided a report on the situation at the front.
The spokesman described the city as a fortress that the Ukrainian government had strengthened over the years, attributing its capture to the "heroism" of the Russian military.
The Russian state media RT, true to the Kremlin's propagandistic narrative, used the term "liberated" to refer to what is, in fact, a military conquest.
Ukraine has not officially confirmed the loss of the city. Its General Staff only reported active fighting in that direction.
Kostiantynivka had approximately 78,000 inhabitants before the war and is part of the so-called "Fortress Belt", a defensive line in Ukraine built over more than a decade that also includes the cities of Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Slaviansk.
Its fall clears the way towards these last two cities, which are the main targets of the Russian offensive in Donbas.
The fighting for the city continued from late 2025, when Russian troops began to infiltrate its perimeters after the capture of Toretsk in August of that year.
The advance was extremely slow: barely 50 meters per day, in what analysts described as one of the slowest progress rates recorded in any conflict in the last century.
Peskov also indicated that Putin requested to ensure the evacuation of civilians remaining in the area and expressed his "deep gratitude" to the soldiers for their "successful performance."
Moscow also announced this Friday that its forces now control the entirety of the Luhansk region, one of the two that make up the Donbas.
The day was marked by crossfire on multiple fronts. A Ukrainian bombardment of a market in Tokmak, in the Russian-occupied area of Zaporiyia, killed five people and wounded another 18.
In the Sumy region, a Russian attack claimed the lives of four people, including a girl who had not yet turned two and her mother.
All of this happened a day after the largest Russian attack on Kiev since the start of the invasion: in the early hours of Thursday, Russia launched 74 missiles and 496 drones against the Ukrainian capital, leaving at least 25 dead and more than 90 injured, with 52,000 people seeking refuge in the subway.
The conflict also has a Cuban face: at least 93 citizens from the island have died fighting as mercenaries in service of Russia in Ukraine, with the complicity of the regime in Havana.
With the fall of Kostiantynivka, Russian pressure on Kramatorsk and Slaviansk—the last major Ukrainian strongholds in western Donbas—intensifies in the face of the coming months of the conflict.
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