Russia’s Defense Ministry announced on Saturday that its forces, during their summer campaign, have taken control of 19 villages in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia provinces in southeastern Ukraine.

The ministry cited a report by Pyotr Bolgavar, commander of the Eastern Forces group. The names of the villages were not released.

The claim comes as Volodymyr Zelensky, president of Ukraine, said on Thursday that the operation by the country’s forces in Dnipropetrovsk has led to the liberation of 26 villages.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which assesses territorial control using open-source geolocated data, cautiously estimated that Ukraine has regained at least 627 square kilometers in the area.