The Russian Defence Ministry said on Wednesday that its forces had ​taken full control of the Luhansk region in eastern ‌Ukraine, suggesting they had wrested control of a small sliver of land which had remained beyond their reach since 2022.

Reuters could not independently ​verify the battlefield report, and a Ukrainian military spokesperson ​said there had been no battlefield changes in the ⁠area in the last six months.

More than 99% of ​Luhansk, one of four Ukrainian regions Russia claimed as its own ​in 2022 — something Kyiv and most Western countries have rejected as an illegal land grab — has long been under Russian control.

“Units of the ‘West’ ​military grouping have completed the liberation of the Luhansk People’s ​Republic,” the Defence Ministry said in a statement, using Moscow’s preferred name ‌for ⁠the region.

Luhansk is one of two regions — along with Donetsk — which make up the wider industrialised Donbas area. The Kremlin on Wednesday reiterated its demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the ​part of Donetsk ​which Moscow does ⁠not control to end what it called the “hot phase” of the war, a demand Kyiv ​has repeatedly dismissed as absurd.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said ​its ⁠forces had also taken control of the village of Verkhnya Pysarivka in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and of Boikove in the Zaporizhzhia ⁠region ​in southeastern Ukraine. Reuters could not ​independently verify those battlefield assertions.