As Russian forces continue to gain momentum in Ukraine's Donetsk region, Moscow could also be planning an imminent push further south, according to Kyiv.
Following a report by his commander Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv is tracking Russian troops in the Zaporizhzhia oblast and that "we see the existing threats."
General Oleksandr Pivnenko, commander of Ukraine's National Guard, said on Wednesday that Ukrainian soldiers had repelled an attempted Russian offensive in the Zaporizhzhia sector.
Sharing footage of the attack without revealing its scale, Pivnenko said Ukraine's Spartan Brigade aerial reconnaissance had responded to Russian troops planning to attack Ukrainian positions with an infantry group.
Ukraine had earlier warned that Russia was deploying assault groups toward Zaporizhzhia, which was among four Ukrainian regions that Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed to have annexed in September 2022, which Moscow does not fully control.
Newsweek reached out to the Russian Defense Ministry via email for comment.
A report by The Economist this week said that Ukrainian intelligence believed Russia is preparing for a bold assault on Zaporizhzhia's regional capital of the same name. It is located around 20 miles from the front and has been targeted by Russian missiles and glide bombs, destroying hundreds of homes.
It comes amid growing concern at the pace of Russian advances in Donetsk. Ukrainian monitoring group DeepState, cited by independent outlet Agentstvo, said Russian forces had captured 90 square miles last week in their biggest advance of the year.
In its update on Monday, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russian troops "are coming closer to enveloping the town of Velyka Novosilka," a logistics hub whose capture can threaten Ukrainian supply lines leading to the Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts.
The Washington, D.C.-based think tank said on Tuesday that Russian forces continued advancing in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area with geolocated footage showing these gains southwest of Velyka Novosilka.
The think tank said that Russian forces have gained 222 square miles since November 1, 2024, an average rate of eight square miles per day.
However, it said that Moscow still needs to capture over 3,000 square miles to seize the whole Donetsk region and that at the current rate of advance, that could take roughly a year, "which is not a given."
"Russian forces have not been able to restore operational maneuver to the battlefield to make deep penetrations into Ukrainian positions," such as in the earlier months of the war, it added.
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