Zelenskyy: Lose Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and Russia's road runs deep into Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelenskyy is drawing a hard line around two eastern cities — and warning what happens if it breaks. Speaking about the war's next phase, he said Russia wants to take Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, and that from there the road runs straight into the Dnipropetrovsk region, toward Pavlohrad and Dnipro, according to RBC-Ukraine.

That stretch of country isn't just map space. Zelenskyy described it as an industrial and machine-building hub that Ukraine's economy leans on, and said a heavily fortified defensive line already guards it. Hand those cities over, he argued, and the risk becomes enormous — Russia could then roll up a large number of Ukrainian cities, with no guarantee from anyone that it stops.

Zelenskyy also sized up the ground Russia already holds: roughly 18–19% of Ukraine's territory. He said Moscow shows its own citizens different maps than reality, and he listed more targets he believes Putin is chasing — Zaporizhzhia, which he said Russian forces want but cannot take, plus Mykolaiv, which he said Putin doesn't name out loud.

On the southern front, the picture is getting louder. On October 22, Ukraine's South military grouping said Russian forces had finished preparing for mechanized attacks and were moving armored vehicles into position, per RBC-Ukraine. Deputy spokesperson Anastasiia Shevchenko called the Huliaipole direction the hottest spot, with 10 to 20 battles logged there every day.

Diplomacy is running in parallel. Zelenskyy noted that US President Donald Trump is pushing both sides toward compromise, and he framed Ukraine's ceasefire willingness as the concession that already exists — arguing that simply freezing the lines where they stand is an enormous compromise, and asking where security guarantees would be if Ukraine pulled back even farther. On October 21 he had called a frozen front line a realistic route to ending the war, with guarantees to be sought from Trump and European allies.

He didn't leave Kherson out of it either. Because the Dnipro River splits the city — Ukrainians on one bank, Russian forces on the other — he said that geography is exactly why the city keeps getting shelled.