Russia on Friday said it had captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, a key post on the road leading to the last major cities in the Donbas region under Kyiv’s control.
The battle for this city, which had around 78,000 inhabitants before the war, has been taking place since late 2025 and now constitutes the main Russian effort on a front more than 1,000 kilometres long.
“Kostyantynivka has been completely taken. The city is now entirely under our control,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including those from AFP, announcing that President Vladimir Putin had spoken with the military about it.
Kostyantynivka is one of the last Ukrainian strongholds on the way to the key cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, whose capture is the Kremlin’s ultimate objective in the Donbas.
Peskov said Putin went to a Russian army command post, where he listened to a report from his general staff and thanked the Russian soldiers.
Russian forces now control the entire Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, one of the two regions that make up the Donbas, Peskov added.
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