Ukraine war: How six new trends are shaping the conflict

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Russia is locked into an attritional war in Ukraine, achieving little on the battlefield and at a high cost for its personnel and economy, as Ukraine strikes back with more precision at Russian oil. Meanwhile, Russian forces have waged their most destructive campaign against Ukrainian civilians and energy infrastructure, plunging Ukraine into darkness. By continuing sabotage and letting its drones stray further into Europe, Russia has threatened European security, testing European governments’ resolve in the face of risks short of triggering mutual defense clauses. 

This report explores six key themes that have shaped the conflict over the past year, including developments across the front line, Russian targeting of civilians and energy infrastructure, spillover into Russia and Europe, and sabotage activity and anti-corruption demonstrations in Ukraine. 

As diplomatic efforts to end the war are expected to pick up in year five, a close look at the fourth year of the war reveals the cost of continued fighting — as well as the danger of securing a peace that will not last.

1. Russian offensives in 2025 accentuated across the front line amid heavy losses

While the pace of Russia’s offensives picked up in 2025 compared to the year prior, its gains have remained incremental, as has been the case since 2022. Despite reportedly heavy infantry losses, Russia expanded the territory it controls in Ukraine by only around 4%, according to monitoring groups. It currently controls about 20% of the country,¹ but ACLED records political violence involving Russian forces across all of Ukraine’s oblasts in the past year (see map below). Ukraine was unable to repeat its sweeping counter-offensives of 2022 or its surprise invasion into the Russian Kursk region of 2024. Instead, it has been forced to stretch resources across the whole front line in defense. 

Most Russian advances last year were concentrated in the Donetsk region and its immediate vicinity. Here, fighting focused around the key town of Pokrovsk and further west into the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia regions, as well as approaching the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk from the south and the north. After two years of heavy fighting for Pokrovsk, in early December 2025 Russia captured nearly the entire town and left it in ruins, a conquest that came at the cost of heavy losses.² 

Capturing the area has allowed Russia to sustain operations into the neighboring Dnipropetrovsk region. As a result, violence in the region nearly tripled compared to the year prior. Following the capture of Velyka Novosilka in January 2025, Russian westward advances caused the collapse of the previously stable front in the neighboring Zaporizhia region. Here, intensified Russian attacks and a relentless infiltration campaign pushed Ukrainian forces to retreat behind Huliaipole, endangering the regional capital of Zaporizhia.

In the central part of the Donetsk region, Russian forces continued pushing toward the major logistical hub of Kostiantynivka, entering the city in December. Fully capturing Kostiantynivka would open the way to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk – the last major Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk. Russia has also advanced toward Lyman from the north and east, a previously dormant operational direction. Capture of this town would likewise threaten a future offensive on Sloviansk from the northern direction.

In the northern front, Russia attempted to further stretch out Ukrainian forces and create a buffer zone against strikes and clashes in its own territory. In the Kharkiv region, Russia’s year-long fight for Kupiansk was thwarted by a surprise Ukrainian counter-offensive in December that liberated most of the city and the surrounding towns. After reclaiming the Kursk region, Russian forces again invaded a part of the Sumy region north of Sumy city between April and May. Late last year, Russia also intensified attacks in the northern Kharkiv region around Vovchansk. 

2. Russia’s relentless drone-led civilian targeting focused on densely populated areas

As Russian forces scaled up and improved their production of drones, drone-led targeting of civilians increased in 2025, exceeding other types of attacks for the first time. Such attacks increased both along the front line and further afield. First-person-view drones were used primarily to hit forward positions of Ukrainian forces, but they also continuously targeted civilians in front-line communities. This was predominantly documented in the Kherson region, where Russia records and publishes drone footage of its civilian targeting, sometimes referring to the practice as “hunting.”³ 

In targeting civilian populations further from the front line, Russia engaged in wave attacks that combined attack drones with missiles and decoy drones to saturate Ukraine’s airspace, complicating air defense efforts. Russian long-range strikes have terrorized the whole country since the start of the invasion. City areas come under persistent fire, as around 86% of long-range attacks targeting civilians hit densely populated urban areas with populations of over 2,000 people per square kilometer. This includes frequent targets such as the capital city of Kyiv, the port cities Odesa and Mykolaiv, and the industrialized Dnipro and Kryvyi Rih, though no region was spared last year. Many of these strikes hit residential areas, historic city centers, and critical infrastructure and have collapsed multi-story apartment buildings, trapping civilians under the debris. Such strikes appear to be aimed at increasing hardship for the local population and exerting pressure on the Ukrainian government, rather than gaining a tangible military advantage. 

3. Russia’s targeting of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure escalated ahead of the coldest winter of the war

In September last year, Russia launched yet another campaign of targeted attacks against energy infrastructure in Ukraine in the lead-up to the coldest months. ACLED records over 735 Russian strikes damaging energy infrastructure between September and 13 February, already more than during any winter prior. The attacks hit energy generation and distribution facilities across Ukraine, leading to the immediate reintroduction of rolling blackouts in many regions. As temperatures dropped below zero in January, the energy crisis worsened significantly due to continued strikes, higher consumption, and snowstorms complicating repairs. 

People in apartment buildings in large cities, including Kyiv, Odesa, and Kharkiv, were left without electricity, water, or heating for days at a time amid freezing temperatures. Between 20 December and 18 January, over 1,100 people sought emergency medical care in Ukraine due to frostbite and hypothermia, according to the Ministry of Health.⁴ A three-day energy ceasefire between 30 January and 1 February did not bring much relief, as strikes resumed in full force right after.

4. Ukraine’s intensified long-range attacks on oil brought the war back to Russia

In 2025, Ukraine escalated its campaign against Russia’s infrastructure, increasing the number and the reach of its drone strikes on oil infrastructure and the precision and impact of strikes on military facilities. Ukraine struck Russia’s oil extraction facilities as far away as the Caspian Sea and Russia-linked tankers from the Black Sea to the coasts of Libya and Senegal. 

While Russia’s oil production levels remained unchanged from 2024 levels,⁵ Ukrainian efforts hampered both oil refinement and export. The repeated targeting of Russian oil refineries led to a 20% reduction in oil refining capacity at its most intense point⁶ and forced Moscow to rely more on crude oil exports to fund its war efforts. Facing a limited market due to European Union and United States sanctions, Russia ended up with large stocks of its oil parked at sea, where they were subject to increased risk for Ukrainian strikes and intensified European policing.⁷ 

Meanwhile, Ukraine executed frequent attacks on Russia’s large military-industrial enterprises and railway infrastructure. More than the strikes on Russia’s oil industry, the smuggled drone attacks on Russian strategic aviation aircraft under the Ukrainian operation Spiderweb made a more significant reputational dent in Moscow’s self-perception as a great air power. Ukraine also conducted assassination attempts against former and current Russian officials and soldiers and disrupted civilian aviation operations during the summer holiday period. These attacks suggest a larger tactic of bringing the war to Russia through remote violence and threatening Russian revenue streams. 

5. Russia increasingly tested Europe’s security

In 2025, the war in Ukraine affected other European countries like never before, as Russia increased pressure on Ukraine’s European allies through suspected sabotage, security breaches, and open provocation (see map below). 

In particular, suspected Russia-linked disruptive drone flights occurred in and near NATO airspace, including sensitive sites such as the Crozon submarine base in France and the Kleine-Brogel US nuclear weapons base in Belgium, and military-industrial sites such as the Bergerac and Eurenco ammunition factories, key suppliers for Ukraine. Disruptive flights of drones and repurposed meteorological balloons affected civilian aviation across Europe, most notably at Lithuania’s main airport in Vilnius, where traffic was disrupted in over a dozen cases. Suspected Russian sabotage also damaged a key railway route to Ukraine in Poland, as well as telecommunications and utility infrastructure in the Scandinavian countries. 

Russian drones targeting Ukraine, including both decoy drones and those carrying explosives, also strayed further afield last year than ever before, testing European Union and NATO resolve and mapping national defenses. The majority of such instances were recorded in EU member states Romania and Poland, but drones were also reported in neutral Moldova and Russia-allied Belarus. 

6. Back home, Ukraine faced sabotage attacks and anti-corruption demonstrations

Throughout 2025, Ukraine had to confront increasing security threats posed by Russia-recruited saboteurs behind the front line, while Ukrainian society's tolerance for high-profile corruption thinned as the government tried to dismantle the cherished independence of anti-corruption bodies.

Areas in Ukraine far from the frontline suffered from recurrent sabotage activity, mostly carried out by Ukrainians recruited by Russian special services online. Teenagers or other vulnerable individuals were typically more likely to be contacted, motivated by a monetary reward rather than ideological conviction, despite Russian efforts to depict sabotage as genuine and widespread. These events increased significantly starting in mid-2024. That year, arson accounted for over 80% of the reported incidents. In 2025, however, sabotage operations increasingly incorporated IEDs. Such events occurred at five times the rate observed in the year prior. Nearly 20% of these incidents resulted in successful detonations. Common targets for these attacks were property of uniformed personnel, police, recruitment offices, post offices, and railway infrastructure.

Ukraine’s government was also reminded that the Ukrainian society remains ready to oppose decisions seen to undermine key democratic institutions supporting the country’s trajectory. With the exception of the March 2022 wave of anti-occupation protests, demonstration events in Ukraine had been limited since the start of the invasion due to security concerns and increased tolerance of perceived government failings in the face of an existential threat. Most demonstrations were small-scale protests that demanded the release of prisoners of war and civilians held captive by Russia. In late July 2025, however, the government faced an eruption of protests against a bill aimed at decreasing the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption organs. The demonstration wave was short-lived as the change was rolled back a week later, but it underlined what has been at the heart of Ukrainians’ opposition to Russian influence: strong anti-corruption sentiment and the power of the popular will to affect government decisions.

Visuals produced by Ana Marco and Christian Jaffe.