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Russo-Ukraine War - October 2025

A number of claims and counterclaims are being made on the Ukraine-Russia conflict on the ground and online. While GlobalSecurity.org takes utmost care to accurately report this news story, we cannot independently verify the authenticirusso-ukraine-2025-of all statements, photos and videos.

On 24 February 2022, Ukraine was suddenly and deliberately attacked by land, naval and air forces of Russia, igniting the largest European war since the Great Patriotic War. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" (SVO - spetsialnaya voennaya operatsiya) in Ukraine. The military buildup in preceeding months makes it obvious that the unprovoked and dastardly Russian attack was deliberately planned long in advance. During the intervening time, the Russian government had deliberately sought to deceive the world by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

"To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." [Judgment of the International Military Tribunal]

@NOELreports stated 13 October 2025 "Here we go again. A massive Russian assault with 16 armored vehicles was repelled near Dobropillia. Units from Azov (1st NG Corps), Air Assault Forces, and Unmanned Systems Forces took part. Russians struck toward Myrnohrad, Razino, and focused on Shakhove. Result: 9 IFVs, 4 APCs, 3 tanks, and 3 motorcycles destroyed. Confirmed losses: 78 troops.""

Early in 2025, Russian field armies parked almost all of their armored vehicles and attacked with infantry and motorcycle troops, instead. Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post’s military correspondent, reported 18 October 2025, "the Russian army, using its own internal logic, returned to optimistic, armored attacks with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, in a definite bid to gain ground by overwhelming Ukrainian defenses with massive, modern combined arms firepower. Way back in February 2023 the Ukrainians first put together a solid combined arms defense that cut attacks like that to pieces, and since then pretty much neither side has been able to make much progress with armored forces against an organized defense. This week we saw that nothing really has changed."

Trump was placing more pressure on Ukraine than on Russia as he prepares for a new summit with President Vladimir Putin, the Wall Street Journal reported 17 October 2025. Several American officials told the outlet that they have observed Trump’s “hesitation to push Putin, who has shown little interest in concessions needed for a deal.” One WSJ source noted that “the White House has put more pressure on Kiev than on Moscow.” The WSJ said Washington has weighed additional measures to increase pressure on Moscow, but so far has stopped short of applying them. This comes as Putin and Trump held a phone call ther previous day, during which the two agreed to hold a summit in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks.

Putin demanded Ukraine hand over full control of the eastern Donetsk region as a condition for ending the war, during a 2-hour call with his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump on Oct. 16,according to two senior officials cited by Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post.1 Birnbaum also reported that Putin indicated willingness to abandon claims on portions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in exchange for Donetsk, a small concession compared to earlier demands, which some White House officials viewed as progress.

Trump did not publicly comment on Putin’s demand, but in the high-tension meeting with Zelensky, the US leader urged his Ukrainian counterpart to accept Putin’s terms, reportedly warning him that Putin had vowed to “destroy” Ukraine if Zelensky did not agree to his terms, according to Christopher Miller, Max Seddon, Henry Foy, and Amy Mackinnon of the Financial Times. At one point Trump—who was “cursing all the time” tossed aside maps of the front line Zelensky — who refused to yield more territory without fight — brought to the meeting.

Asked after the meeting whether was concerned that Putin was stringing him along, Trump said he was not concerned, according to AP and WP’s Birnbaum. “I’ve been played all my life by the best of them, and I came out really well,” he said, adding it was “all right” if it took a little time. “But I think that I’m pretty good at this stuff,” he added.

Following the Trump-Zelensky meeting, the US president said that he had told both the Ukrainian leader and Putin that “it is time to stop the killing, and make a DEAL.” “They should stop where they are… Let both claim Victory, let History decide!” he said. Russia has consistently praised the Trump administration over what it described as a genuine desire to find a peaceful settlement to the conflict and as attempts to understand its root causes.

Due to the colossal losses of the Russian invaders in the Dobropillya area, the outskirts of the city were literally littered with the corpses of attackers. This is evidenced by the footage published on October 19, by the Airborne Assault Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine on their Telegram channel. They show the bodies of the occupiers lying in heaps, while their remains were being eaten by local dogs.

"The number of corpses of Russian soldiers lying in the field is simply amazing. Nameless and abandoned. No one is looking, no one is counting. Dogs are eating the mangled bodies of Russians. Putin's war has turned his own people into statistics, and the country into a bottomless demographic pit," the DSHV comments.

Trump halted plans to hold talks with Putin in Budapest, saying he did not want a "wasted" meeting. Trump says he canceled a planned summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, pointing out a lack of progress in diplomatic efforts and a sense that the timing was off as reasons. During his meeting with the NATO Secretary-General in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump told reporters that it just didn't feel right. "We canceled the meeting with President Putin. It just, it didn't feel right to me. It didn't like we were going to get to the place we have to get, so I canceled it. But we'll do it in the future.""

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday in Oslo that he backs Trump's proposal for Ukraine and Russia to stop at the current frontlines was "a good compromise." "After our conversation, you saw messages, public messages from Trump, he proposed staying where we stay and begin conversation -I think that was a good compromise, but I'm not sure that Putin will support it, and I said it to the President."

Given that this came amid Putin demanding that Trump give him the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, the Guardian viewed Trump's proposal as a modest win for Zelenskyy, though he keeps wavering on key aspects of the war. According to the Wall Street Journal, with disappointment levelled at Putin for not making significant progress in discussing a ceasefire, Trump may have dropped the limitations on Ukraine's use of long-range missiles. In fact, Ukraine did use a British Storm Shadow cruise missile to strike Russia, which originally needed approval from the U.S. Secretary of War. The authority to approve such attacks was returned to the U.S. military's European command, and though Trump claimed that this was "fake news," many say the reversal could be because talks with Putin are not making progress.

Donald Trump for the first time imposed direct sanctions on Russia, signaling growing impatience with Vladimir Putin. The move was announced after the US president hosted NATO Chief Mark Rutte for talks on how to support Ukraine. The US has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia's top oil firms, Rosneft and Lukoil, aiming to pressure Moscow into ending its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. President Trump, joined by NATO Chief Mark Rutte, said the move could shift Putin's stance as the sanctions block global business ties with the companies, targeting a key source of Russian revenue.

The US sanctions represent a major stepping up of its actions against Russia and reflect Trump's growing frustration at being unable to persuade Putin to end the conflict despite what he calls his personal chemistry with the Kremlin chief. The sanctions involve a freezing of all Rosneft and Lukoil assets in the United States, while barring all US companies from doing any business with the two Russian oil titans.

"Given President Putin's refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia's two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin's war machine," US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Bessent later told the Fox Business program Kudlow that it was "one of the largest sanctions that we have done against the Russian Federation. "President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we'd hoped," Bessent said, adding that Trump was "disappointed at where we are in these talks".

A Russian soldier fighting in Chasiv Yar said that new recruits sent to the front die almost immediately, with his own unit taking over 90% casualties. The fields are strewn with rotting corpses. To avoid having to pay compensation to relatives, collecting IDs is banned.

Zelensky won’t order his encircled troops to lay down arms in Kupyank and Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) — their fate is sealed, believes military expert and retired colonel Anatoliy Matviychuk. These soldiers are "doomed" either to captivity or death, while Russia’s forces advance deeper toward Dnepropetrovsk, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk.

The fall of Kupyank and Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) totally dismantles Zelensky as a credible politician, exposing the lies he peddled to his Western sponsors, Anatoliy Matviychuk, who has experience in combat operations in Afghanistan and Syria, told Sputnik 29 October 2025. Zelensky had been spinning the story that he’s in full control, making gains, liberating territory, and that Russians are surrendering by the millions. Admitting the encirclement would mean admitting the territory is lost, says the pundit. After hawking one fake narrative after another, Zelensky now faces a massive credibility hit. “Losing this territory means losing control of the situation. In short, he stops looking like an honest politician to the West,” says the analyst.

Russia’s encirclement of Ukraine’s troops in Kupyansk and Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) destroys the myth of Ukrainian alleged “military victories” in 2025, Alexander Mikhailov, head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis, told Sputnik 30 October 2025. It also upended as fiction the Ukrainian and Western narrative that Russia is stalling and “unable to advance.” Taking the bridgehead opens the road toward the final phase of liberating the Donbass cities of Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, notes the expert. This will be a devastating “political and psychological blow” to Zelensky’s regime. Reports that Ukraine is desperately deploying its GUR (Military Intelligence) special forces into the meat grinder of collapsing frontlines show “there’s no one left to send.”

The fall of Kupyansk and Pokrovsk marks more than just a battlefield loss — it’s an image crisis for the US and its allies, underscores Mikhailov. The West fostered this regime, and now “the responsibility for nearly two million Ukrainian deaths and the country’s collapse lies squarely on their shoulders.” For Ukraine, its best move may be to save what’s left of its army and accept peace on Russia’s terms.

Russian forces carried out a massive strike with high-precision weapons on facilities of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, the Russian Defense Ministry reported 30 October 2025. “In response to Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian targets inside Russia, a large-scale strike was launched last night using long-range precision weapons from air, sea, and land platforms, as well as strike drones, against enterprises of Ukraine’s military-industrial complex, energy infrastructure supporting their operations, and military airfields,” the statement said. All designated targets were hit, and the intended objectives were successfully destroyed, the ministry added.