Russia-Ukraine War: List of Key Events, Day 1,400

These are the main developments of the 1,400th day of the Russian war against Ukraine.

Published on December 25, 2025

Here’s where things stand on Thursday, December 25:

Struggle

An explosion in Moscow killed three people, including two police officers, just days after a car bomb killed a top Russian general in the same area of the capital.
A Ukrainian military intelligence official, known as GUR, told the Associated Press news agency that the attack was carried out as part of a Ukrainian operation and that the two police officers were targeted for their participation in Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Russian air defense units shot down 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 teams were examining fragments of where the drones hit the ground, but no damage was reported.
Two of the four main airports serving Moscow have been forced to limit operations for a while due to drone attacks, Russia’s civil aviation authority said on Telegram.
The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defense units destroyed 172 Ukrainian drones overnight, almost half of them over Ukraine’s border regions.

Ukraine said its drones struck the Efremov synthetic rubber factory in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, as well as a marine drone storage facility in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Tula Regional Governor Dmitry Milyaev said debris from a downed Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at an industrial site and Russian air defense units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones over the region.
A sunflower oil spill caused by Russian aerial bombardments has contaminated the coastline around the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, killing wildlife and triggering warnings from environmental campaigners, the AFP news agency reports.
“The cause was damage to sunflower oil tanks as a result of massive enemy attacks on port infrastructure, causing part of the oil to spill,” Odessa Governor Oleh Kiper said in a statement. The region’s Pivdenny port was temporarily closed on Wednesday to facilitate clean-up.
A Russian-backed court in occupied Ukraine has sentenced a Colombian man to 19 years in prison for fighting in kyiv’s army.
Russia’s prosecutor general said the Supreme Court of Ukraine’s Russian-controlled Donetsk region sentenced Oscar Mauricio Blanco Lopez, 42, to 19 years in prison. The Colombian arrived in Ukraine in May 2024 to join the Ukrainian army and was “taken prisoner by Russian soldiers” in December 2025.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has revealed for the first time details of an agreement between the United States and Ukrainian negotiators on ending the war with Russia. The 20-point plan, agreed by American and Ukrainian negotiators after marathon negotiations, is currently being revised by Moscow.
As part of the plan, President Zelensky said Ukraine would be ready to withdraw its troops from the country’s eastern industrial heartland if Moscow also withdrew and the area became a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.
A similar arrangement could be possible for the area around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is currently under Russian control, Zelenskyy said. The Ukrainian leader said any peace plan should be subject to a referendum in Ukraine.

Asked about the latest developments in ceasefire negotiations, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would decide its position based on information received by Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who met with U.S. envoys in Florida over the weekend.
Russia has given no indication that it would accept any withdrawal from the land it has seized in Ukraine. Moscow has also insisted that Ukraine give up the remaining territory it still holds in Donbass. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and around 70% of Donetsk – the two regions that make up Donbass.

A majority of Russians expect the war in Ukraine to end in 2026, Russia’s polling institute VTsIOM said, a sign that the Kremlin could test public reaction to a possible peace settlement as diplomatic efforts to end the conflict intensify.
At the survey institute’s end-of-year presentation, Mikhail Mamonov, deputy director of VTsIOM, said that 70 percent of 1,600 respondents considered 2026 a more “successful” year for Russia than 2025, while for 55 percent this hope was linked to a possible end to the Russian war in Ukraine.
A Russian court has scheduled the first public hearing in a criminal case against German sculptor Jacques Tilly, accused of discrediting the Russian military through his satirical Carnival floats depicting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Moscow court said the trial would begin on December 30 and take place in absentia because Tilly – who faces up to 10 years in prison or a fine – is not in Russia.
Zelensky said in his Christmas speech on Wednesday that although the holiday comes at a “difficult” time, the unity of the nation remains intact. “Ukrainians are together tonight,” Zelensky said, adding that the country had “without a doubt” been transformed by the war. “It doesn’t matter what dishes are on the table, what matters is who is at the table,” he said.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he spoke with NATO chief Mark Rutte to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the work being undertaken by the “coalition of the willing”. “From January in Paris, we will continue the work started in this framework to provide Ukraine with solid security guarantees, a prerequisite for a solid and lasting peace,” Macron said on social media.
Democratic senators in the United States have urged President Donald Trump to reverse the recall of nearly 30 career ambassadors, warning that the move leaves a dangerous leadership vacuum that allows adversaries like Russia and China to expand their influence. In recent days, the Trump administration has ordered career diplomats stationed in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America to return to Washington to ensure that U.S. missions abroad reflect its “America First” priorities.

Kazakh exports of its flagship product, oil blend CPC, will be the lowest in 14 months in December as bad weather delays efforts to repair Russian loading infrastructure after Ukrainian drone strikes last month, two sources told the Reuters news agency.
On November 29, Ukrainian drones struck the Caspian Pipeline Consortium terminal near the “Russian Black Sea port” of Novorossiysk, leaving only one in three piers operational and extending export delays. Bad weather added to the difficulty of carrying out the necessary maintenance work to allow exports to resume.
Ukraine’s Finance Ministry said it has finalized the settlement of a deal to restructure $2.6 billion in growth-linked debt.