Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 12, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian drone and missile attacks across Ukraine on Saturday killed at least five people, while also cutting power to parts of the southern Odesa region, the AFP news agency reported, citing local officials.
• Two of the victims were killed in an attack on a church in Kostiantynivka in eastern Donetsk, AFP said.
• Ukraine’s private energy firm DTEK said that power has been restored to 240,000 households in Odesa after a Russian attack overnight on Saturday, which damaged some energy infrastructure.
• The Russian TASS news agency said a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s Kursk region killed an 81-year-old man.
• An official from Ukraine’s SBU security service told the Reuters news agency that Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Bashneft oil refinery in Ufa, causing explosions and a fire. The unnamed official said the attack marked the third time Ukrainian forces struck the facility in Bashkortostan in southwestern Russia in the last month.

Regional security

• United Kingdom Secretary of State for Defence John Healy said that two Royal Air Force aircraft flew a 12-hour mission earlier this week alongside US and NATO forces to patrol Russia’s border. Healy described the joint operation as “substantial”, coming after a series of alleged Russian drone and aircraft incursions into NATO airspace.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that he discussed the most recent Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system in a call with United States President Donald Trump. He described the discussion as “positive and productive”, while adding that the two also talked about how to bolster Ukrainian air defences.

• In a separate post on Facebook, Zelenskyy said that he congratulated Trump for his “outstanding” ceasefire plan in the Middle East, while urging him to broker a similar deal for Russia’s war on Ukraine. He wrote that if Trump could stop one war, “others can be stopped as well”.

• Cuba denied US claims that it had deployed soldiers to fight for Russia in its war in Ukraine. It also said that 26 Cubans had been sentenced to prison terms ranging from five to 14 years for mercenary activity since September 2023, when reports circulated of Cubans being sent to the front in Ukraine.