President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has visited troops near the front line in the southern Zaporizhia region, as Ukraine’s military said it carried out an attack on a Russian-occupied oil facility in the area.
Zelenskyy posted on X that he visited the “command post of the 65th Separate Mechanised Brigade” on Thursday near the front-line town of Orikhiv, publishing photographs of his meeting with troops.
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The Ukrainian military said earlier this week that the situation at the Zaporizhia front line had deteriorated, with Russian troops accelerating their advance there.
“I listened to a report on the operational situation in this sector, enemy activity, and losses among the occupiers,” Zelenskyy said.
“We are doing everything to strengthen our warriors.”
Coinciding with Zelenskyy’s visit to boost troop morale, the Ukrainian military said its forces hit an oil terminal in Crimea, which Russia seized and annexed in 2014, as well as an oil depot in the occupied Zaporizhia region.
The Ukrainian general staff said on Telegram that Russian oil facilities and other military targets were hit by domestically produced weapons, including Flamingo ground-launched cruise missiles and drones.
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Meanwhile, at least three people were killed in a Russian drone attack near the village of Bohuslavka in Ukraine’s eastern region of Kharkiv, authorities said on Thursday.
According to Governor Oleh Syniehubov, two people were immediately killed in the strike, and one person succumbed to injuries in a hospital. Another person was injured, he said.
The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Thursday its units “continued their advance deep into the enemy’s defence” and took control of the village of Danylivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region. It said troops also took control of the settlement of Synelnykove in Kharkiv.
Earlier this week, Russian forces captured three villages in the southern region, partially occupied by Moscow, with the fighting largely frozen.
Ukraine will return to peace talks: Moscow
Kyiv will “sooner or later” have to return to negotiations with Moscow and from a “much worse position”, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, a day after Ukraine announced suspending peace talks to end the war that has continued since 2022.
Peskov, responding to comments from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said the situation for Kyiv is “deteriorating day by day”, asserting that Ukraine would eventually be compelled to re-engage in dialogue with Russia.
Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergiy Kyslytsya, in remarks published on Wednesday, told British daily The Times that Kyiv has formally halted the peace talks, citing a lack of meaningful progress during the rounds held earlier this year in Istanbul.
“Since the peace talks ended this year without significant progress, they have been suspended,” Kyslytsya said, adding that Ukraine has asked allies to help secure a direct meeting between Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Putin has shown no interest in such a summit, rebuffing entreaties from United States President Donald Trump.
Germany urges Kyiv to take action against corruption
Meanwhile, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told Zelenskyy on Thursday that Germany expects Ukraine to do far more to fight corruption after reports of a scandal rocked Kyiv.
The Ukrainian government must “energetically advance anticorruption measures and further reforms, particularly in the area of the rule of law”, Merz told Zelenskyy in a phone call, a statement from the chancellery in Berlin said.
Zelenskyy on Thursday ordered sanctions on an associate and former business partner at the heart of the corruption scandal that has led to outrage in a nation exhausted by nearly four years of war.
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On Wednesday, Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers submitted their resignations amid the wide-reaching inquiry, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said, shortly after Zelenskyy called for their dismissals.
Anticorruption officers have said the scheme saw $100m in funds from the energy sector – battered by Moscow’s attacks – siphoned off.
In the phone call, Zelenskyy told Merz about the investigations into the scandal and “promised complete transparency, long-term support for independent anticorruption authorities, as well as further swift measures to restore the trust of the Ukrainian population, European partners and international donors”.
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