Kathrine Frich
This is far from the first time Moscow’s numbers have failed to add up.
When bad news piles up on the front lines, commanders sometimes prefer a good story over hard reality.
Telling the boss what he wants to hear is an old military habit, especially when the pressure to deliver results keeps rising.
Now, a fresh battlefield update is being called out as pure fiction.
Five kilometers away
According to Ukrainian outlet United24 Media, Russia’s top general just handed Vladimir Putin a wildly optimistic update on the war in southern Ukraine.
Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the Russian General Staff, told the Russian president that Moscow’s troops had seized the village of Malokaterynivka and pushed to within five kilometers of the major city of Zaporizhzhia.
State-aligned media in Russia quickly echoed the story. Outlets claimed that Moscow’s Dnipro grouping had taken the settlement as part of a wider drive toward the regional capital, painting the move as another solid victory.
Ukrainian military officials flatly rejected the story on Sunday, October 18. They insist the village has not fallen at all.
Proof on camera
Speaking to United24 Media, Maksym Kravchuk, a public affairs officer for Ukraine’s Southern Group of Forces, dismissed the Russian report and shared visual evidence from the ground, including a photo of a soldier from the 128th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade holding a unit flag outside a damaged building in the village.
“This is false. Malokaterynivka remains under Ukrainian control, approximately 12 km from the southern outskirts of the city. Video recorded today in the settlement shows Ukrainian soldiers present there,” Kravchuk said.
Independent defense analysts are also poking holes in the Kremlin’s map. Earlier, the US-based Institute for the Study of War, known as the ISW, disputed Gerasimov’s claim that Russian soldiers sat just five kilometers from Zaporizhzhia.
A pattern of exaggerations
According to the ISW assessment cited by United24 Media, main Russian positions actually sit at least 20.95 kilometers away from the city. Even when counting small, limited infiltration attempts by Russian units, the closest troops remain roughly 11.6 kilometers out.
This is far from the first time Moscow’s numbers have failed to add up. Looking at the bigger picture for 2026, the ISW found that Russia’s real territorial gains this year were roughly 45 times smaller than what Putin publicly claimed.
Analysts at the think tank say these inflated battlefield stories serve a clear purpose. By broadcasting exaggerated victories, Moscow is running a wider information campaign designed to make Russian momentum look completely unstoppable.
