Here is how things stand on Thursday, October 9, 2025:

Fighting

• Three people were killed and one injured by Ukrainian shelling in Russia’s Belgorod region, the local governor said.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces had taken control of the settlement of Novohryhorivka in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region.
• Russia’s air defence units destroyed 53 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing Russian Defence Ministry data.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that his country’s forces had killed thousands of Russian soldiers in the Dobropillia region of eastern Ukraine since August 21, when they launched a counteroffensive against Moscow’s occupying troops. Zelenskyy said this information was based on a report he had received from the Ukrainian army’s Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskii.
• Zelenskyy also said Ukraine’s attacks on Russia’s oil facilities had degraded them to an extent that the country was experiencing energy shortages. Russia, he claimed, had been forced to turn to its diesel reserves, which it had been saving for “a rainy day”.

Regional security

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said recent drone incidents and other airspace violations show Europe is facing hybrid warfare to which it must respond with measures that go beyond traditional defences, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
• Von der Leyen said it was clear Russia’s aim was to “sow division” and “weaken support for Ukraine”, and that Europe could “either shy away and watch Russian threats escalate, or meet them with unity, deterrence and resolve”. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has denied that Moscow was behind the recent drone incursions into the airspaces of multiple European nations.

Military aid

• Russia will respond harshly if the United States supplies Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles, Andrei Kartapolov, head of the Russian parliament’s defence committee, said, emphasising that “those who supply them and those who use them will have problems”.

Diplomacy

• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the impetus to find a Ukrainian peace deal, which emerged after the summit between President Putin and US President Donald Trump in August, had proven to be exhausted.
• Ryabkov urged US leadership to take a “sober and responsible approach” to a possible transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, saying such transactions could lead to a “qualitative change” in the situation.