Sitrep for Dec. 22-26, 2025 (as of 9 a.m. UTC+3)

Frontline Situation Update

In the Siversk direction, the Russian Armed Forces continue their offensive. They have captured the town of Siversk—the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine announced a withdrawal from the town on Dec. 23—and are advancing further west. The Russian Ministry of Defense has already claimed the capture of the village of Sviato-Pokrovske, southwest of Siversk, though on the DeepState map it remains marked as contested.

In the Pokrovsk direction, the situation has not fundamentally changed over the past few days. Fighting continues on the western flank, where this week Russian drones hit the first Australian-supplied M1A1 Abrams tank. The supplier country can be identified by its distinctive spotted camouflage; the other Abrams tanks delivered to Ukraine were painted dark green. It has recently become known that Australia has delivered the final batch of the 49 Abrams tanks it had pledged. However, the tank hit near the town of Pokrovsk was most likely from the first batch, which arrived back in mid-summer. The fact that these tanks are in service with the 425th Skala Assault Regiment supports the assumption that Ukrainian assault units are receiving the best equipment and munitions.

In the Dobropillia direction, near the village of Razine (north of the village of Novoekonomichne and east of the town of Rodynske), a large column of Russian armored vehicles—including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, armored personnel carriers and other equipment—attempted to cross the Kazenyi Torets River but came under strikes by Ukrainian drones. It is worth noting that earlier the RuAF mainly tried to force the river near the villages of Pankivka, Novotoretske and Maiak. However, as the situation in the town of Myrnohrad has developed, crossing the Kazenyi Torets near Novoekonomichne has become more relevant, likely with the aim of further advancing north into the area of the former Dobropillia salient.

In most cases, Russian attempts to advance with armored columns prove futile, as they are detected and destroyed by Ukrainian forces. Although armored vehicles are used rather rarely in the conditions of modern drone-warfare conditions, the AFU do sometimes employ them as well, as we noted above.

In the Kostiantynivka direction, the RuAF launched an attack on the village of Stepanivka, which was repelled by the AFU. This is particularly important because the western flank of this axis had remained relatively quiet for a long time. If Russian forces manage to advance further to the village of Illinivka, northeast of Stepanivka, they would reach the southwestern outskirts of the town of Kostiantynivka.

On the eastern flank of the Kostiantynivka direction, according to the Ukrainian Telegram channel Shalin, the RuAF captured the villages of Stupochky and Predtechyne, and their zone of control expanded all the way to Kostiantynivka itself. According to DeepState, these villages are contested, and we reported RuAF advances toward this area back in September based on Playfra data. It is worth mentioning that Playfra has not recorded these changes earlier this week and still considers Stupochky, Predtechyne and the Santurynivka area as contested.

In the Dnipropetrovsk region, the Russian MoD claimed to have captured the village of Andriivka and released footage showing Russian flags. In our assessment, Andriivka should therefore be considered part of the contested gray zone. The village is located less than five kilometers [3.1 mi] from the highway connecting Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk. If Russian troops manage to gain a foothold in Andriivka and deploy drone operators there, the highway would come under fire control. This would complicate AFU supply lines east of the village of Pokrovske. Earlier, the RuAF declared the capture of not only this village in the Oleksandrivka direction, but also Vidradne, Ostapivske, Danylivka, Pishchane in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and Zarichne in the Zaporizhzhia region.

In the Huliaipole direction, Russian forces continue their offensive in the town of Huliaipole. Russia’s MoD released video footage showing a strike on the town center using BM-21 Grad MLRS. Although officials claimed the target was a command post of Ukraine’s drone forces, the use of area-effect weapons against what would be a small facility makes little sense. Such actions also constitute war crimes. With civilians likely still present in the city, strikes by rocket artillery are far more likely to kill residents than to disable an AFU command post. It is worth noting that in our previous sitrep we wrote about the evacuation from Zaliznychne, which now lies close to the front line.

The frontline in the Sumy region has unexpectedly become more active—and not in the border village of Hrabovske, which the DeepState map now marks as captured. Russian forces are advancing near the villages of Oleksiivka, Andriivka and Kostiantynivka. This shift is likely linked to the redeployment of Ukrainian UAV operators from the Sumy region to more critical sectors of the front.

In the Kharkiv region, the AFU are mopping up the town of Kupiansk. Pro-Russian Telegram channels have begun actively reporting on the deteriorating situation there for the RuAF, noting in particular that heavy snowfall has complicated the work of drone operators.

Conscription, Mobilization and Contract Military Service

Recently, both official sources and pro-war channels have been actively advertising recruitment of contract soldiers into the newly formed Unmanned Systems Forces of the RuAF. Such advertisements now appear even in Telegram channels of small towns, while Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has publicly urged gamers to become drone operators. In addition, representatives of the MoD have begun encouraging students at technical universities, during in-person meetings, to join the unmanned forces. The advertisements promise contracts starting from one year, with a guaranteed possibility of discharge from military service upon their expiration. However, since Putin’s decree extending all MoD contracts until the end of the mobilization period takes legal precedence over contract terms, and since the advertisements highlight large payouts, we believe that applicants are being misled into thinking they will be able to terminate their contracts and return from the frontline. In practice, the only way to return from the frontline before the end of mobilization is to sign a contract not with the MoD but with a "volunteer" formation such as the Redut PMC, which offers significantly lower payments.

Hackers have breached the Unified Military Register and the infrastructure of Micord, its key developer. One of the register’s main functions is to facilitate mass mobilization and restrict citizens from leaving the country during such periods.

On Dec. 22 in Moscow, a car belonging to Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov, chief of the Operational Training Directorate of the General Staff of the RuAF, was blown up; he later died from his injuries. His responsibilities reportedly included assessing the readiness of army group and field commanders to carry out the general operational plan drafted by the Main Operational Directorate of the MoD. In effect, he was supposed to serve as a link between Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov or Minister of Defense Andrey Belousov and, for example, formation commanders on the ground. Given the inefficient employment of Russian forces and the numerous failures associated with the so-called "advances on credit," such as those observed in Kupiansk, we doubt that Sarvarov was performing his duties effectively.

On Dec. 24, near the site of Sarvarov’s murder, another explosion occurred, killing two traffic police officers and the bomber. According to sources from RBC-Ukraine in the Main Intelligence Directorate, the officers had been involved in the torture of Ukrainian prisoners of war, though this information has not been confirmed. Photographs of one of the officers in ceremonial military uniform appear to date from his period of statutory military service. If he had served under contract in 2023 and taken part in the war in Ukraine, he would not later have been eligible for employment as a police officer, since from fall 2022 all military contracts have been open-ended.

Ukrainian and Russian Strikes

In the early hours of Dec. 23, Ukraine was subjected to a massive air attack by the RuAF with 635 UAVs and 38 missiles. Energy infrastructure facilities were struck, leading to prolonged power outages across many regions.

On Dec. 22, the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy reported the completion of a major logistics operation that lasted 11 months, during which the European Commission transferred a complete set of equipment from a Lithuanian thermal power plant to Kyiv. The operation comprised 149 deliveries totaling 2,399 tons, including extremely heavy transformers and stators weighing about 172 tons each. Since February 2022, under the EU Civil Protection Mechanism (UCPM), 9,500 generators and 7,200 transformers have been delivered to Ukraine, yet even these volumes cannot compensate for the losses caused by Russian strikes.

Ukraine continues to experience a serious shortage of air defense assets, given that any system can be overwhelmed by a large number of loitering munitions. According to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the shortage of interceptor drones is not due to a lack of funding but to limited production capacity: manufacturers simply cannot produce the required numbers fast enough.

According to Bloomberg, Russia has transferred a batch of FPV drones and other weapons to Madagascar. Photographs show what appear to be low-quality, 3D-printed unmanned aerial vehicles. In our view, such a delivery indicates less that Russia has a large surplus of drones and more the political importance the Kremlin assigns to international military-technical cooperation.

In previous sitreps, we reported on strikes against bridges in the western Odesa region and the establishment of a ferry crossing near the village of Maiaky. On Dec. 25, a video appeared showing the use of this crossing over the Dniester River.

On Dec. 22, in the port of the city of Odesa, a Russian Shahed-136 (Geran-2) loitering munition attacked a Lebanese-flagged dry cargo ship carrying Ukrainian soybeans. On Dec. 23, in the Black Sea, Russian drones attacked a Turkish vessel transporting sunflower oil from Ukraine to Turkey.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported that prior to the attack on the Russian Varshavyanka-class submarine at the Novorossiysk Naval Base, a specially equipped drone disabled an Ilyushin Il-38N anti-submarine aircraft at the Yeysk airbase. This aircraft otherwise could have detected the Sub Sea Baby underwater drones and disrupted the operation.

On Dec. 21, a downed drone, presumably Ukrainian, was found in Romania. Likely due to a technical malfunction, it lost contact with the operator and flew in a random direction until its battery charge was depleted. This is not the first time Ukrainian drones have inadvertently entered the territory of European countries. Three days later, Estonia’s state prosecutor stated that a UAV that fell on the Estonian territory on Aug. 24 was of Ukrainian origin; evidence suggests the incident occurred during AFU strikes on Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region.

Western Assistance

Britain has begun supplying Ukraine with Paveway IV laser-guided air-dropped bombs, whose guidance cannot be jammed in the way GPS-based systems used by other precision munitions can be. The bombs have a range of about 28 kilometers [17 mi], which is relatively short given the current conditions observed in this war and significantly limits their operational use.

Ukraine’s defense minister Denys Shmyhal said after talks with Sweden’s defense minister that preparations are underway to begin training Ukrainian pilots and technicians to fly and maintain Swedish JAS 39 Gripen fighter jets. No timeline for the start of the training, or details about its funding, have been disclosed.

President Zelenskyy announced that he plans to meet with President Donald Trump in the near future. According to the Axios journalist Barak Ravid, citing a Ukrainian source, the meeting is expected to take place as soon as this Sunday, Dec. 28.

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