🔶 Moscow announced the capture of an important city in Ukraine; Kyiv denied it Russia has said it has captured the city of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, told reporters: “Kostiantynivka has been completely taken. This city is now under our full control.” The spokesman for the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces denied Russia’s claim early on Saturday, July 4 (13 Tir), and called it incorrect. Earlier, the General Staff of the Ukrainian army, in a report about its own situation, had reported heavy fighting around Kostiantynivka. The Ukrainian army had also recently acknowledged the difficult situation in this city, much of which had been destroyed earlier. Despite this, one of the officials from the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces denied Russia’s claim that it had taken this strategic city and said: “This is another fake claim.” Kostiantynivka is a strategic base along the route of those last major cities in the Donbas region that remain under Kyiv’s control. The city, which had a population of about 78,000 before the war, has been the scene of intense fighting since late 2025. The announcement that the city had been taken coincided with Vladimir Putin’s visit, the Russian president, to a command headquarters; a headquarters from which operations of Russian forces in Ukraine are directed. According to Dmitry Peskov, Russian forces now have full control of Luhansk Oblast in eastern Ukraine; one of the two regions that make up the Donbas. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials said that in Russian attacks on various locations in the country, large numbers of civilians were killed. Based on this report, in the city of “Sumy” in northern Ukraine, an attack with a guided bomb killed four people and caused about 30 people to be injured. Also, according to Ukrainian officials, three people died in the Dnipropetrovsk region in southeastern Ukraine. Two people were killed in the city of Zaporizhzhia. Alongside these developments, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the President of Ukraine, reported that the country’s army attacked oil facilities and military targets deep inside Russian territory the previous evening, and said that “Ukraine’s long-range sanctions against Russia” had reached targets near Saint Petersburg. In recent months, the Ukrainian president has referred to his country’s army attacks deep inside Russia as “long-range sanctions.” Zelenskyy wrote on social media: “Ukrainian defense forces targeted port oil infrastructure that helps generate revenue for Russia’s war, and successful attacks were also carried out against Kronstadt, an important military target. The distance of this area from Ukraine’s borders is more than 850 kilometers.”