Zelenskyy rejects Russian claim about capture of Kostiantynivka city in Donetsk region

Kanyshai Butun

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday denied Russian claims that Moscow had captured the city of Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region.

Zelenskyy accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of choosing “to lie to the world” about the situation on the frontline.

“He claims that Russian forces have supposedly captured Kostiantynivka in the Donbas. Of course, that is not true,” he wrote on US social media company X, calling the claims “just another Russian lie.”

“If Kostiantynivka were under Russian control, then perhaps Putin would have no problem meeting me there to find a diplomatic way to finally end this war. But the fact is, he won’t cross the front line – reality is very different from Putin’s words,” he stressed.

Andriy Kovalev, Ukraine’s General Staff spokesman, told the Ukrainska Pravda newspaper that Kyiv continues defensive operations in and around the city, stressing that “the situation remains difficult but is under the control of Ukraine’s defense forces.”

“On July 3, the enemy carried out 11 assault actions on this front, without success,” he said, accusing Moscow of spreading “disinformation and fakes” about the situation on the ground.

Russia claimed on Friday that its forces had taken control of the front-line industrial city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“The main news is that Kostiantynivka has been completely taken,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Stating that Putin expressed gratitude to the Russian soldiers who helped take control of the settlement, Peskov said the Russian president described its capture as the “first, but very important, stage in the capture of the already important Sloviansk-Kramatorsk defensive hub of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

Kostiantynivka is about 24 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city of Kramatorsk, which has served as the administrative center of the eastern region since Russia seized Donetsk in 2014.