Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 22, 2025:
Fighting
- A “massive” Russian attack killed four people and injured seven in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi, in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, Governor Viacheslav Chaus wrote in a post on Telegram.
- Chaus said that Russian forces launched about 20 Shahed drones in the attack and that there was “a lot of destruction in the city”.
- Russian attacks killed two people and injured one person in the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the head of the Kostiantynivka City Military Administration, Serhii Horbunov, wrote in a post on Facebook.
- A Russian drone attack injured nine people in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said.
- A Ukrainian attack killed one person and injured five in settlements in a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the Russian-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said.
- A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya in Russia’s Belgorod Region, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing regional authorities.
- Russian attacks on energy facilities left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine said on Tuesday.
- More than 1,000 people were left without electricity due to a Ukrainian attack on the Kamianka-Dniprovska area of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Zaporizhia region, TASS reported, citing local officials.
- Ukrainian forces struck the Bryansk chemical plant in Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a post on Facebook, adding that the “outcome of the strike is being assessed”.
Politics and diplomacy
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- A senior White House official told Al Jazeera that “there are no plans for [US President Donald] President Trump to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the immediate future”, days after Trump suggested a meeting could take place in Hungary “within two weeks or so”.
- Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said of developments: “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting… I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also implied that any potential meeting could take time, saying “preparation is needed, serious preparation”.
- However, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, said on X late on Tuesday that the “media is twisting comment about the ‘immediate future’ to undercut the upcoming Summit”, adding that “preparations continue” for the meeting between Trump and Putin.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Moscow’s dwindling interest in the presidential meeting came after the US appeared to back away from considering supplying long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
- “As soon as the issue of long-range mobility became a little further away for us – for Ukraine – Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.
Regional Security
- A man who shot and wounded Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico last year has been found guilty of terrorism charges and handed a 21-year jail sentence. The shooter said he opposed the approach taken towards Ukraine by Fico, who ended state military assistance to Ukraine and sought closer ties with Moscow.
