The Russian Defence Ministry claims its units took 120 buildings in a single day in the town of Kostiantynivka in eastern Ukraine. The figure sounds dramatic - but it also comes from one side only, with no independent confirmation and no Ukrainian response. And in war, the first casualty is always the number.

According to the Russian version, the fighting has shifted from a line front to street combat waged "block by block, building by building", focused on the south-western part of town where Ukrainian units are allegedly surrounded - the 28th and 100th mechanised brigades. Moscow also claims heavy Ukrainian losses: up to 100 killed in Kostiantynivka alone, destroyed armoured vehicles, pickups, artillery pieces and dozens of robotic systems.

This is where caution belongs. Urban warfare as a rule means slow advances, heavy losses for the attacker and a complex defence - the exact opposite of the picture of a swift breakthrough that every press release is selling. When an army announces an exact number of buildings taken in a single day, that looks more like messaging for the home audience than a verifiable battlefield report. Why trust a number no independent observer has seen?

For the Balkans this isn't a distant story. The region knows all too well what it means when war enters the cities - when the front is no longer a line on a map but a street, a building, and people trapped between them. Whoever's figures they are, the reality on the ground is the same for ordinary people: a destroyed town and lives torn apart between two armies fighting for every block. The rest is propaganda, whichever side it comes from.