“We continue our operations that weaken Russia’s ability to wage this war,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on X Sunday.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said that Moscow should “respond to Ukraine’s serious proposals to sit down at the negotiating table and end the war.”

“The longer Putin refuses to accept the reality that he will never achieve any goals on the battlefield, the worse things will get for Russia,” Sybiha wrote on X.

Putin said that Ukraine had proposed a mutual halt to long-range strikes as a step toward peace, but said Russian forces would press ahead with their battlefield campaign.

“The reason for such a proposal is obvious: our retaliatory strikes deep inside Ukrainian territory are far more powerful, more painful and, frankly speaking, more destructive, causing truly serious consequences for the Kyiv regime,” Putin said in a Sunday interview.

He added that Ukrainian attacks were aimed at “diverting our attention and resources from the main task — the final liberation of Donbas and Novorossiya,” referring to the Donbas as well as the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of eastern Ukraine.

Despite Ukraine’s drone campaign taking a growing toll on Russia’s energy sector and logistics, the Kremlin’s forces are pressing forward toward Kostyantynivka. The city is a key stronghold in Ukraine’s eastern “fortress belt” that Putin has long sought to capture.

Russian state media outlet TASS claimed last week that Russian forces had “gained full control” of Kostyantynivka’s eastern part and approached its northeastern outskirts.

Kyiv has rejected claims that Kostyantynivka is being encircled and the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said parts of the city have become a contested “gray zone,” with neither side exercising full control.

Capturing Kostyantynivka would move the Kremlin closer to one of its remaining major war aims: seizing the entirety of the Donbas region. It would also be a timely propaganda boost given the pain that Ukraine has been able to inflict in recent months.