Regional Overview
Europe and Central Asia
May 2025

Posted: 8 May 2025

In this Regional Overview covering April 2025

Armenia-Azerbaijan: Gunfire along borders intensifies
France: Drug traffickers attack prisons and their staff
Russia: Fighting in border areas slows down; a car blast kills another general
Ukraine: Russia advances slowly amid increased targeting of civilians

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Armenia-Azerbaijan: Gunfire along borders intensifies

In April, ACLED records at least 50 instances of gunfire along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border — a nearly 20% increase compared with already heightened levels in March. Together, they mark one of the most significant escalations since September 2023, when Azerbaijan recaptured Artsakh.¹ Armenia’s southern Syunik region accounted for over 60% of all claims of ceasefire violations. In addition, eight instances of gunfire occurred in the northern region of Tavush, where the sides delimited a section of their border in 2024.

Significantly, Armenian sources reported on the majority of these instances, including three events in which Armenia’s defense ministry reported damage to civilian infrastructure and residences. Prior to March, the ministry had refuted sporadic Azerbaijani claims of ceasefire breaches but rarely made claims itself amid efforts to conclude a peace agreement with Baku. Neither side reported any casualties.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan played down concerns of renewed violence, suggesting that the occurrences are random.² Meanwhile, the European Union Mission to Armenia increased its patrols across the country, including at night.³ Tensions were further exacerbated during the month by an Armenia-Iran military exercise on both sides of the shared border,⁴ Armenia’s regular call-up of reservists,⁵ and a secretive Azerbaijani military exercise in its Nakhchivan exclave sandwiched between Armenia, Turkey, and Iran.⁶

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France: Drug traffickers attack prisons and their staff

Between 13 and 22 April, 16 coordinated arson attacks targeted prison buildings and prison guards across France. Amid the attacks, unidentified perpetrators also threw Molotov cocktails and shot at a house they believed to belong to a prison guard in Villefontaine, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, on 20 April. However, the dwelling was inhabited by a pensioner, who was left unharmed. In most instances, perpetrators torched cars outside detention centers and spray-painted “DDPF” inscriptions, standing for “Défense des droits des prisonniers français” (Group for the Defense of French Prisoners’ Rights), a hitherto unknown group. It claimed on Telegram to be advocating for the respect of human rights in prison. Between 28 and 30 April, police arrested 30 suspected members of the DDPF. Seven of them were already in prison during the attacks, while two of them were minors.⁷ Counter-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office investigators ruled out a political motive and said that the DDPF had been created and led by inmates with ties to the DZ Mafia — a violent Algerian drug trafficking gang that has recently asserted its authority over smuggling routes around Marseille, intimidating and attacking businesses and other traffickers to extend its influence.⁸

In recent years, French penitentiary staff have faced increased threats from gang members. In May 2024, two guards were killed during the escape of detainee Mohamed Amra from prison in Incarville,⁹ which triggered a wave of protests demanding more staff and a solution to overcrowded cells.¹⁰ Amra was eventually extradited from Romania in February.

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Russia: Fighting in border areas slows down; a car blast kills another general

On 26 April, the chief of Russia’s General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, claimed that the Kursk region had been fully cleared of Ukrainian armed forces following their withdrawal to positions on either side of the border in March.¹¹ ACLED data show no battles in the region between 26 and 30 April, though official Ukrainian sources and some Russian military bloggers alleged ongoing fighting.¹² The alleged cessation of fighting in the region came on the back of a 75% decrease in violence in April compared to the month prior. Border clashes in the neighboring Belgorod region continued, but also subsided closer to the month’s end. Both Russian and Ukrainian troops may be redeploying from the Kursk and Sumy regions for a possible looming Russian offensive in Ukraine itself.¹³

Meanwhile, on 25 April, suspected Ukrainian operatives killed General Yaroslav Moskalik with an explosive device attached to a car near his residence in Balashikha near Moscow. Moskalik was a senior operations officer at Russia’s General Staff.¹⁴ This is the second Russian general likely assassinated in connection with the war in Ukraine, after the killing of the head of a chemical weapons unit in December 2024. Earlier in April, another car bomb killed a civilian engineer involved in designing electronic warfare systems for the Russian army in Bryansk, similarly to the assassination of a missile designer near Moscow also in December 2024. Since Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, suspected Ukrainian operatives have killed several military officers in Russia, a turncoat former member of Ukraine’s parliament, an occupation governor of the Kharkiv region, a propagandist, as well as the daughter of a Russian nationalist ideologue.

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Ukraine: Russia advances slowly amid increased targeting of civilians

The pace of the Russian occupation of Ukraine appeared to slow further in April after stalling since January. Russian forces seized a total of 13 settlements, compared with 16 in March. Of these, 11 were in the directions of Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in the Donetsk region. The advances came at a staggering loss of personnel.¹⁵ Nevertheless, Russian forces broke through a Ukrainian line of defense in the direction of Lyman, a town north of the Kramatorsk-Slovyansk-Kostiantynivka urban agglomeration. It is already threatened from the south and is Ukraine’s last stronghold in the Donetsk region after Pokrovsk, which Russian troops attempted to envelop from the southwest rather than attacking head-on. After recapturing most of the adjacent Russian Kursk region, they also gained a foothold in the Sumy region.

Despite engaging in US-brokered ceasefire talks¹⁶ and announcing unilateral truces, Russia persevered in carrying out indiscriminate attacks on populated areas across Ukraine, pushing the civilian death toll to nearly 200 in April — a third more than the average in the previous 12 months. The spike was due to a series of repeated ballistic missile strikes on Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Kharkiv, and Sumy cities, which killed at least 75 civilians and injured 435 others. In the case of the latter three cities, the missiles carried cluster munitions. Ballistic missiles are difficult to intercept, while cluster munitions scatter large areas with explosives, increasing the threat to civilians. Ukrainian authorities also claimed in April that Russian drones have begun to scatter explosives, putting civilians at further risk, even if intercepted.¹⁷

For more information, see the ACLED Ukraine Conflict Monitor.

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Methodology

See the Codebook and the User Guide for an overview of ACLED’s core methodology. For additional documentation, check the Knowledge Base. Region-specific methodology briefs can be accessed below.

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