Here are the key events from day 1,345 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 31 Oct 2025
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Here is how things stand on Friday, October 31, 2025:
Fighting
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces took control of the villages of Krasnohirske in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region and Sadove in the Kharkiv region, Russian state news agencies reported.
- Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and other targets on Thursday and in the early hours of Friday, forcing nationwide power restrictions and killing seven people.
- The victims include one person in a village south of Ukraine’s southeastern industrial city of Zaporizhzhia who was killed in a Russian drone strike.
- Regional officials said two men were also killed in Russian attacks on Zaporizhzhia itself, while a seven-year-old girl from the central Vinnytsia region died in hospital from injuries sustained in the attacks.
- Prosecutors in the Donetsk region said Russian attacks on dwellings in the city of Kramatorsk killed one person and injured three.
- In Sumy, a city near the northern border with Russia, the regional governor wrote on Telegram that 10 Russian drones attacked the city early on Friday. He said two people were injured when two apartment buildings were hit, and pictures posted online showed several apartments ablaze.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address that a bomb attack on a thermal power plant in Sloviansk in eastern Donetsk region killed two people and injured a number of others.
- Zelenskyy added that Russia launched more than 650 drones and 50 missiles in the attacks. Most of the drones were neutralised and two-thirds of the missiles were downed, he said.
- Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko accused Moscow of targeting Ukrainian people and power supplies as the cold winter months approach. “Its goal is to plunge Ukraine into darkness. Ours is to preserve the light,” Svyrydenko said.
Europe
- Polish MiG-29 fighter aircraft intercepted a Russian reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea in the second such incident this week, Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said.
- Poland said it would not reopen more border crossings with close Russian ally Belarus until at least mid-November in a move intended to show solidarity with fellow NATO member Lithuania amid heightened security concerns.
- Poland closed its border with Belarus six weeks ago because of what Warsaw said were “very aggressive” Russia-led military exercises on Belarusian territory, days after 21 Russian drones entered Polish airspace. Lithuania shut its land border with Belarus this week in response to airspace disruptions caused by smuggling balloons and said it would remain closed until the end of November.
- A German of Russian ethnic background was convicted of spying and planning arson attacks on military installations and railways in Germany on behalf of Russia and sentenced to six years in prison. A court in the Bavarian state capital, Munich, gave two accomplices suspended sentences of 12 and six months.
Peace talks
- Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban will meet United States President Donald Trump on November 7 in Washington, where he aims to discuss a path to a US-Russia meeting in his country and seek exemption from US energy sanctions, Orban’s chief of staff said.
- Russian senator Vladimir Dzhabarov said Trump should negotiate with Russia, rather than imposing sanctions on it, according to state news agency RIA Novosti.
Nuclear weapons
- The Kremlin said Russia’s test of a nuclear-powered missile and a nuclear-powered torpedo were not nuclear weapons tests, after President Trump suggested the United States would resume nuclear weapons testing to the same levels as its rivals. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russian President Vladimir Putin cautioned that if any country tested a nuclear weapon, then Russia would too.
- Andrei Kartapolov, a senior Russian lawmaker, said nuclear testing by the US will lead to a return to an era of unpredictability and open confrontation, RIA reported.
