Ukraine’s HUR military spy agency said it had conducted a joint operation with military units to halt advances in the Donetsk region as well as attempts to break through into Dnipropetrovsk region.
In Russia’s Rostov region, a fire reportedly was still burning on August 23, 2025 at the Novoshakhtynsk Oil Refinery three days after being hit by Ukrainian drones. Russia and Ukraine have both claimed success on the battlefield in the eastern flank of Ukraine while drones have become the primary weapon for both sides.
Ukraine’s military said it had downed or intercepted nearly three dozen of the more than 50 drones Russia fired. Russia accused Ukraine of launching dozens of its drones at Russian targets overnight, claiming that most were intercepted.
Russia has hit Ukraine with another volley of drones at night. After this, Russian troops took control of two more settlements near the front line in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry said on August 23, 2025.
The ministry press release said that the villages of Kleban-Byk, northwest of the town of Toretsk, and Seredne, closer to the administrative border of the northeastern Kharkiv region, are now under the control of the Russian military.
A major Ukrainian logistics base has come under Russian occupation during this engagement. The Russian ministry had announced the capture of three villages on August 22, 2025. They attributed it to the Russian military’s slow advance across the Donetsk region. Two of the villages — Katerynivka and Rusyn Yar — are located near Kostyantynivka, a fortified town on the road to Kramatorsk. Ukraine’s military did not acknowledge that any of the villages had changed hands. However, the General Staff of Ukraine’s military said Katerynivka was one of several localities that Russian forces have been attacking but not winning.
The Ukrainian military said its forces had recaptured a settlement on the western edge of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Ukraine’s HUR military spy agency said it had conducted a joint operation with military units to halt advances in the Donetsk region as well as attempts to break through into Dnipropetrovsk region.
Ukrainian military officials on August 23, 2025 said Kyiv’s forces had stopped a Russian advance and recaptured the village of Zeleny Gai in the Donetsk region. Russia claimed the capture of the village in July. Russia recently has focused on seizing land in the Donbas region that it does not yet occupy. It has maintained its demand for Ukraine to give up land it still holds in two eastern regions while proposing to freeze the front line in two other regions that Moscow claims fully as its own.
Officials in Krasny Sulin in the Rostov region shut down the city’s water supply citing an “emergency situation at one of the enterprises” in the neighboring city of Novoshakhtynsk. Antonina Pshenichna, the minister of housing and communal services in the city, said water was needed to extinguish the fire.
Water will be restored to the estimated 35,000 people living in Krasny Sulyn “after the tanks are filled to the required level and the water main is pressurized,” Pshenichna said without specifying when this would happen.
Russia launched dozens of drones at Ukrainian targets early on August 23, 2025 the latest in days of aerial barrages that have dampened hopes for a halt to the Ukraine war following last week’s Alaska summit.
Air raids sounded in the Zaporizhzhya and Chernihiv regions south of Kyiv in the bordering regions of Sumy, Donetsk, and Kharkiv. It was unclear if there were casualties or damage on the ground.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who described talks at the White House on August 18, 2025 with European leaders as a “road to nowhere,” said no meeting was planned as US President Donald Trump’s mediation efforts appeared to stall. Zelenskyy on August 23 said he spoke by phone with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who added his voice to calls for a Russia-Ukraine summit. Zelenskyy said he told Ramaphosa he was ready for any kind of meeting with Putin.
