MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin took the border security zone off the bargaining table on Friday, in the same session in which his generals said the town of Dobropolye had fallen. Whatever else Kyiv is asked to discuss, the Russian president said, the zone his forces are establishing along the frontier is not on the agenda.
Speaking at an auxiliary command post of the Joint Force, Putin said the task set after Ukraine’s incursion into the Kursk Region was not only to drive Ukrainian troops out but to establish that zone, and that the work is succeeding. “Our task is to ensure absolute security of Russia’s border territories in the future and we are not going to make this a subject of any potential peace talks with Ukraine,” TASS quoted him as saying. In July he had told commanders the border security zone had been “significantly expanded.”
The timing matters because Washington’s channel is stalled. US, Ukrainian and European officials met in Miami on October 9, and reports said the talks ended early. A source told TASS on October 12 that envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner “will come but only after there is clarity on the position” of Kyiv. Lavrov has said Putin will attend APEC in Shenzhen, where a meeting with Donald Trump remains conditional. Moscow has now said, ahead of any of it, what it will not trade.
RT reported that Gerasimov told Putin assault units from several brigades had cleared Dobropolye and were searching basements for remaining Ukrainian troops. Putin called the capture “a significant milestone in the liberation of Donbas as a whole” and said the next assaults, on Druzhkovka and Kramatorsk, should allow “the swiftest possible completion” of that task. Moscow said in July it had captured Konstantinovka, putting its lines within about 30 kilometers of Kramatorsk.
The figures arrive without a method. Putin said more than 1,300 square kilometers of Donbas and Novorossiya were liberated in September alone, and about 6,500 square kilometers and 310 settlements since January, which by TEH’s arithmetic makes one month a fifth of the year. He put the encirclement of about 2,000 Ukrainian troops in Kharkov Region at more than 460 square kilometers. Gerasimov separately told Putin, TASS reported, that Battlegroup Center took 15 settlements in September and October, with fighting in nine more. Every number is the Russian side counting its own gains.
Dobropolye is the least settled claim. RT noted that the Defence Ministry announced it had encircled the town in late September, weeks before Friday’s report. The Kyiv Independent reported in July from a drone team of Ukraine’s 15th National Guard Brigade fighting out of the city’s basements. TEH found no Ukrainian statement on Friday confirming or denying the loss, and no independent map of the front there.
Whether Kyiv would sit down to talks that exclude the zone is not on the record either.
