Russia again claims to have taken an eastern Ukrainian region. The real picture is very different | CNN

This week, for the third time since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia claimed it fully occupied Ukraine’s Luhansk region. The Russian military has held almost all of Luhansk – one of four eastern regions that Moscow has illegally sought to annex – since the first year of the conflict. It’s unclear why Russia felt the need to announce – again – that its forces had “completed the liberation of the entire territory of the Luhansk People’s Republic,” as it calls the region. Analysts note that the Russia Defense ministry has a habit of exaggerating advances when the frontlines are scarcely changing. Russian gains in Ukraine slowed in the first three months of this year to about five kilometers (three miles) a day, compared to 11 kilometers in the first quarter of 2025, war monitors, including the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), report. And in some parts of the battlefield, the Ukrainians have made gains. Ukraine scoffed at the claim that all of Luhansk was now under Russian control. “The front line hasn’t moved much at all over the past six months. It’s like some kind of April Fools’ Day prank on their part,” said a Ukrainian m