As Russia and Ukraine continue sending record amounts of drones across their border, in what are now nightly aerial raids, Moscow has significantly stepped up its ground offensive, over the weekend announcing it has begun advancing into Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region for the first time in the three-year-plus long war, marking a significant territorial escalation amid stalled peace talks.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said the advance serves as a warning to the Zelensky government to accept "realities on the ground."

The full social media statement said that "Those who do not want to recognize the realities of the war at negotiations, will receive new realities on the ground."

A the same time the Russia's army published photos showing troops raising the Russian flag over the village of Zorya in the Donetsk region, in an area close to the internal border with Dnipropetrovsk oblast, amid the westward push.

Russia's defense ministry on Sunday further announced that forces from a tank unit had "reached the western border of the Donetsk People's Republic and are continuing to develop an offensive in the Dnipropetrovsk region."

The Ukrainian government has yet to issue public response to the new advance, but a military officer told AFP that there is indeed slow Russian progress near the regional border. According to the same report, there are reasons to believe that Russia could soon take a key city there:

Ukrainian military personnel previously told AFP that Russia could advance relatively quickly in the largely flat region, given there were fewer natural obstacles or villages that could be used as defensive positions by Kyiv's forces.

The region and in particular the city of Dnipro — have been under persistent Russian strikes since Moscow invaded in February 2022.

Russia used Dnipro as a testing ground for its "experimental" Oreshnik missile in late 2024, claiming to have struck an aeronautics production facility.

The Dnipropetrovsk region had a pre-war population of three million, and remains a key industrial hub, and Ukraine's military has vowed to keep up resistance on the front lines.