The Kremlin on Sunday issued an important battlefield update with Russian army chief Valery Gerasimov having newly declared that a dozen more eastern villages were seized in February.

"In two weeks of February, despite severe winter conditions, combined forces and military units of the joint task force liberated 12 settlements," Gerasimov said while visiting Russian troops operating inside Ukraine.

Gerasimov described Moscow's forces are advancing toward Sloviansk, the industrial city that has been center of fighting between pro-Kiev and pro-Moscow forces going all the way back to 2014.

According to Gerasimov, Russian troops are now roughly 15 kilometers (nine miles) from the city.

Gerasimov said Russian forces are "expanding a security zone" along border areas in the northeastern Sumy and Kharkiv regions, where Moscow holds limited footholds.

He added that he would confer with senior officers on "further actions in the Dnipropetrovsk direction," signaling potential expansion of operations beyond currently claimed territories - as quoted in AFP.

As also related in TASS:

Russian troops liberated 12 settlements in the first half of February, bringing over 200 square kilometers under their control, Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Army General Valery Gerasimov, announced during an inspection of the Battlegroup Center units.

The Kremlin officially claims the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions as Russian territory, but still doesn't exercise full control over them, but its forces are still slowly advancing, regional reports indicate.

In parallel with the grinding ground war, a more intense nightly aerial conflict continues. Ukrainian cities can barely keep the lights on, with many plunged into near permanent darkness, as Russia targets the national power grid.

But overnight and into the early Sunday hours, Russia's military reported downing over 100 inbound Ukrainian drones within a four hour period. The cross-border attacks have wreaked havoc on Russian oil refineries and export sites, in some cases.