Russia’s Defence Ministry said on 6 July that its troops captured two additional settlements in eastern Ukraine—Piddubne in the Donetsk region and Sobolivka near Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region—marking the latest gains in a three-month push that, according to an Institute for the Study of War analysis, produced the largest monthly territorial advances since November 2024. Ukraine has not publicly confirmed the loss of either village. Instead, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on 8 July that Ukrainian forces have restored positions and continue to hold territory inside Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, an area he previously estimated at about 90 sq km. Syrskyi framed the cross-border foothold as part of an ‘active defence’ intended to prevent Russian units from advancing toward the administrative border of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region. The battlefield claims from both capitals could not be independently verified, underscoring the fluid front lines running from the Pokrovsk and Lyman axes in Donetsk to the northern Slobozhanshchyna sector. Fighting on several fronts, Moscow and Kyiv each portray incremental gains as evidence of broader momentum in the war, now in its fourth year.