As the war enters its 973rd day, these are the main developments.
Here is the situation on Friday, October 25, 2024:
Fighting
- Russian forces launched drone attacks overnight at the Ukrainian capital, the 15th air attack on Kyiv this month, city officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
- One person was killed and nine wounded in a Russian attack in the town of Kupiansk in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Kharkiv, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
- Russian shelling killed three people around the strategic hub of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram messaging app.
- A Russian strike on a branch of the Nova Poshta delivery service killed two people in Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, near the front-line towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka, Filashkin said.
- Russian media and war bloggers reported that Russian forces had advanced into the coal mining town of Selydove, about 20km (12 miles) southeast of Pokrovsk.
- The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the most intense Russian assaults along the front line were currently taking place on the Pokrovsk front, including near Selydove. But it did not say whether Russian soldiers had entered the town.
- Ukraine said Russian forces executed four captured Ukrainian servicemen in Donetsk.
- Ukraine’s military intelligence service said the first North Korean units trained in Russia had been deployed in Kursk, a Russian border region where Ukrainian forces staged a surprise incursion in August.
Politics and diplomacy
- South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs voiced “grave concern” after Russia moved to ratify its defence treaty with North Korea, calling on Moscow to stop its “illegal cooperation” with Pyongyang.
- Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tokyo was following with “serious concern” reports that North Korean troops are in Russia ahead of their possible deployment in Ukraine.
- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his invasion of neighbouring Ukraine violated the UN charter and international law, according to a readout of their meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan.
- Putin said any proposals for peace with Ukraine must take into account the territory held by Russian forces, stressing that negotiations must be “based on the realities on the ground”.
- He also said he welcomed “sincere” comments made by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump about bringing an end to Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.
- Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, slammed Guterres for meeting Putin, calling the Russian president a “murderer”.
- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected Ukraine’s request to immediately join NATO, made by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he presented his “victory plan” to Western allies, saying a country at war “absolutely cannot become a member” of the bloc.