These are the key developments from day 1,400 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.Published On 25 Dec 202525 Dec 2025Click here to share on social mediashare2ShareHere is where things stand on Thursday, December 25:Fighting
An explosion in Moscow killed three people, including two police officers, just days after a car bomb killed a high-ranking Russian general in the same area of the capital.
An official from Ukraine’s military intelligence, known as GUR, told The Associated Press news agency that the attack had been carried out as part of a Ukrainian operation and the two police officers were targeted for taking part in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian air defence units downed 16 Ukrainian drones en route to Moscow throughout Wednesday, the capital’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
Sobyanin said the drones were repelled over a period of about 17 hours, and emergency crews were examining fragments where the drones hit the ground, but no damage was reported.
Two of four major airports servicing Moscow were forced to limit operations for a time due to the drone attacks, Russia’s civil aviation authority said on Telegram.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its aerial defence units destroyed 172 Ukrainian drones overnight, nearly half of them over regions bordering Ukraine.
Ukraine said its drones had struck the Yefremov synthetic rubber plant in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, and a storage facility for marine drones in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Tula regional governor, Dmitry Milyaev, said debris from a downed Ukrainian drone ignited a fire at an industrial site, and Russian air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones over the region.
A sunflower oil spill, caused by Russian aerial bombardments, has contaminated the shoreline around the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa, killing wildlife and triggering warnings from conservationists, the AFP news agency reports.
“The cause was damage to sunflower oil tanks as a result of massive enemy attacks on port infrastructure, causing some of the oil to spill,” Odesa Governor …