As the war enters its 973rd day, these are the most important developments.

Here is the situation on Friday, October 25, 2024:

To fight

• Russian forces launched drone strikes on the Ukrainian capital overnight, the 15th airstrike on Kiev this month, city officials said. There were no immediate reports of injuries.
• One person was killed and nine injured in a Russian attack in the city of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Russian shelling killed three people around the strategic center of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said on messaging app Telegram.
• A Russian attack on a branch of the Nova Poshta delivery service killed two people in Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka, near the frontline towns of Chasiv Yar and Kostiantynivka, Filashkin said.
• Russian media and war bloggers reported that Russian troops had entered the coal mining town of Selydove, about 20 km southeast of Pokrovsk.
• The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said the most intense Russian attacks along the front line are currently taking place on the Pokrovsk front, including near Selydove. But it did not say whether Russian soldiers had entered the city.
• Ukraine said Russian forces executed four captured Ukrainian soldiers in Donetsk.
• Ukraine’s military intelligence said the first North Korean units trained in Russia were deployed to Kursk, a Russian border region where Ukrainian forces carried out a surprise raid in August.

Politics and diplomacy

• South Korea’s Foreign Ministry expressed “serious concerns” after Russia ratified its defense treaty with North Korea and called on Moscow to end its “illegal cooperation” with Pyongyang.
• Japanese Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said Tokyo was following with “grave concern” reports that North Korean troops are in Russia ahead of their possible deployment to Ukraine.
• United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Russian President Vladimir Putin that his invasion of neighboring Ukraine violated the UN Charter and international law, according to a readout of their meeting on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan.
• Putin said any proposals for peace with Ukraine must take into account the territory held by the Russian armed forces, stressing that negotiations must be “based on the reality on the ground.”
• He also said he welcomed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s “sincere” comments about ending Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.
• Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the late Russian dissident Alexey Navalny, denounced Guterres for meeting Putin and called the Russian president a “murderer.”
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected Ukraine’s request to immediately join NATO, which was made by President Volodymyr Zelensky when he presented his “victory plan” to Western allies. He said a country at war “absolutely cannot become a member” of the bloc.