Russian forces take first village in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Lavrov believes NATO will collapse
Sergei Lavrov believes NATO could collapse amid the plan to boost spending.
Germany says Putin wants Ukraine to surrender.
Russian forces have taken control of the first village in the east-central Ukrainian region of Dnipropetrovsk, Russian state media and war bloggers said on Monday, after Russia took 950km 2 of territory in two months.
There was no immediate confirmation from Ukrainian sources or from the Russian Defence Ministry.
As Moscow and Kyiv talk of possible peace, the war has intensified with Russian forces carving out a 200km 2 chunk of Ukraine's Sumy region and entering the Dnipropetrovsk region in May.
The authoritative Ukrainian Deep State map shows that Russia now controls 113 588km 2 of Ukrainian territory, up 943km 2 over the two months to 28 June.
Russia's state RIA news agency quoted a pro-Russian official, Vladimir Rogov, as saying that Russian forces had taken control of the village of Dachnoye just inside the Dnipropetrovsk region.
READ | One dead, 14 hurt as Russia strikes Odesa, Ukraine drones headed for Moscow shot down
Russia has said it is willing to make peace but that Ukraine must withdraw from the entirety of four regions which Russia mostly controls and which President Vladimir Putin says are now legally part of Russia.
Ukraine and its European backers say those terms are tantamount to capitulation and that Russia is not interested in peace and that they will never accept Russian control of a fifth of Ukraine.
The areas under Russian control include Crimea, more than 99% of the Luhansk region, over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, all in the east or southeast, and fragments of the Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Monday that Moscow planned to cut its defence spending, but that he thought a decision by NATO members to increase their own defence spending could ultimately lead to the alliance's collapse.
NATO leaders on Wednesday backed a big increase in defence spending that US President Donald Trump had demanded, and said they were united in their resolve to defend each other against what they cast as a threat from Russia.
Viacheslav Madiievskyi/Ukrinform/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Asked about remarks by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who was reported to have said that an arms race between Russia and the West could trigger the fall of President Vladimir Putin, Lavrov said he thought NATO could collapse.
'Since he is such a predictor, he probably foresees that a catastrophic increase in the budget of NATO countries, according to my estimates, will also lead to the collapse of this organisation,' Lavrov said.
Putin wants Ukraine to surrender, Germany's top diplomat said on Monday as he visited Kyiv after weeks of stepped-up Russian bombardments of the country, according to AFP.
Amid stalled peace talks to end the more than three-year war, 'Putin is not ceding on any of his maximalist demands - he doesn't want negotiations, he wants a capitulation,' Johann Wadephul said as he arrived in the Ukrainian capital on an unannounced visit.
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New York Post
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Check out more newsletters The review says such 'departures from standard procedure not only limited opportunities for coordination and thorough tradecraft review, but also resulted in the complete exclusion of key intelligence agencies from the process. … The decision to entirely shut out the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research from any participation in such a high-profile assessment about an adversary's plans and intentions was a significant deviation from typical IC practices. 'It also was markedly unconventional to have Agency heads review and sign off on a draft before it was submitted to the NIC for review. The NIC did not receive or even see the final draft until just hours before the ICA was due to be published.' 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