Ukrainian forces have liberated 745 square km (288 square miles) of Russian-occupied land this year across a swathe of the southeastern front, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday, hailing an operation he said went “exactly as planned”.

Ukraine’s military has sought to heap pressure on Moscow’s war effort in recent months, counterattacking on parts of the 1,200-km front and striking logistics and energy infrastructure.

Zelenskiy said 26 settlements in the Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions had been brought back under Kyiv’s control. They are located along an approximately 60 km stretch of the front where the borders of the three regions meet.

“This offensive operation of ours was carried out with precision – exactly as planned,” he said on X, crediting Kyiv’s air-assault forces and other units.

According to a battlefield map by Ukrainian open-source group DeepState, much of the area remains in a grey zone that is not fully controlled by either side. Some is marked as still Russian-controlled.

A video posted by Ukraine’s General Staff on Wednesday featured mostly drone-shot footage of its troops holding up the Ukrainian flag in the freed settlements. Reuters could not independently verify it.

Russia’s battlefield advances have slowed this year across much of the front, analysts say, though its forces are still closing in on key cities in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

Moscow has demanded Kyiv give up the rest of the industrialised Donetsk region, which it refuses to do.