Home › Security › What the security picture showed on 26 December 2025
What the security picture showed on 26 December 2025
Summary
A look back at the reports in the days before 26 December 2025, from a withdrawal in Donetsk Oblast to a car bombing in Moscow.
What did the security picture around Ukraine look like on 26 December 2025? The reports from the preceding days pointed in several directions at once: ground losses, strikes inside Russia, a killing in Moscow and an encounter over the Baltic.
The front line
On 23 December 2025, the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirmed their withdrawal from Siversk in Donetsk Oblast. That was the clearest battlefield development in the period.
Strikes and an assassination
On 22 December 2025, Ukrainian military forces launched airstrikes on several targets across Russia. They hit an oil terminal, an ammunition depot and a drone launch site in Krasnodar.
The same day, Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov was killed by a car bomb in Moscow. As reported at the time, the Security Service of Ukraine was being investigated over its role in the attack. It had not taken responsibility. Connections were also drawn to the killing of Igor Kirillov the previous year.
Occupied Crimea
On 23 December 2025, the Russian-installed authorities in Crimea announced a block on mobile internet in the region. They said it would last until the end of the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Beyond Ukraine's borders
The war's effects also reached the Baltic region. On 25 December 2025, the Polish Air Force intercepted and escorted a Russian aerial reconnaissance aircraft over international waters in the Baltic Sea. The aircraft stayed away from nearby Polish airspace.
Reading the sequence
Taken together, the reports describe a war that was active on the ground in Donetsk Oblast and was also being fought through strikes on Russian territory and a targeted killing in the Russian capital. Russian military aircraft were still operating near NATO member Poland, and the Russian-installed authorities in Crimea were tightening communications controls. The reports link these events only by timing. They do not say that one led to another.
