Just ahead of Ukraine's Zelensky arriving at the White House to meet with President Trump, Russia announced Friday morning that its forces had seized three more villages in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv regions.

Russian troops captured Pishchane and Tykhe in Kharkiv and Pryvillia in Dnipropetrovsk, the Kremlin said. The development in the Kharkiv region is going be met with particular alarm among Kiev's backers in the West, given that the Ukrainian's military's 2022 counteroffensive had actually retaken much of Kharkiv.

But the Russian military is clearly pushing forward again, and is eyeing the capture of Kupiansk next, which is a crucial logistics hub in the region.

Russia's military command has at the same time tallied its forces have captured eight Ukrainian settlements in total over the course of the past week.

A statement in TASS says "In the Kharkov direction, Battlegroup North units liberated the settlement of Tikhoye in the Kharkov Region through decisive operations... Battlegroup West units liberated the settlements of Borovskaya Andreyevka and Peschanoye in the Kharkov Region in decisive operations...battlegroup Center units liberated the settlements of Moskovskoye, Balagan and Novopavlovka in the Donetsk People’s Republic through active and decisive operations."

The Defense Ministry continued listing out: "Over the past week, Battlegroup East units liberated the settlements of Alekseyevka and Privolye in the Dnepropetrovsk Region," it said.

Without doubt, Moscow has timed its "announcement" touting the capture of all these locations to correspond with Zelensky's visit to Washington, also coming after Thursday's Trump-Putin phone call.

The only 'leverage' that Ukraine might have is related to its stepped-up long-range drone offensive which has wreaked havoc on Russian oil.

Depot after depot has been hit over the past weeks and months, including also vital oil shipping terminals on the Crimean coast. If Ukraine received long-range missiles from the West and the United States, it will certainly train them on such vital targets.