What did 30 January 2025 show about Ukraine's war?

What did the war look like on 30 January 2025? One answer came from Sumy, where a Russian drone struck a multi-storey apartment building, killing nine people and injuring 13 others. The attack on a residential block sat within a pattern of strikes on civilians that the previous days had also shown.

A pattern of residential strikes

Six days earlier, on 24 January 2025, a Russian drone hit a ten-storey apartment building in Fastiv, in Kyiv Oblast, killing at least three people. Taken together, the two incidents show drones being used against housing far from any front line described in the reports, with deaths in both cases.

Ukraine's answer: reform and reach

Ukraine was pursuing two tracks at once. On 24 January it finalised military reforms aimed at recruiting 18- to 25-year-olds, penalising draft dodgers and lowering the minimum compulsory service age to 25 from 27. The measures addressed the need to bring more people into the armed forces.

The same day, a Ukrainian drone strike hit an oil refinery in Ryazan Oblast, Russia, in one of the largest Ukrainian drone attacks inside Russia of the conflict to that point. The Russian military said it had shot down at least 121 drones over 13 regions overnight.

The human cost beyond the strikes

Also on 24 January, Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War announced that, with help from the International Committee of the Red Cross, the bodies of 757 Ukrainian soldiers had been returned to the country. The figure is a reminder of military losses alongside the civilian deaths in Sumy and Fastiv.

Politics next door

The war also shaped politics in neighbouring states. On 24 January, more than 60,000 people demonstrated across Slovakia against the policies of Prime Minister Robert Fico, which the protesters described as anti-Ukrainian, pro-Russian and Eurosceptic.

Reading the day

The picture on 30 January 2025 was of a war with several fronts: Russian drones killing people in their homes, Ukrainian drones reaching Russian energy infrastructure, a Ukrainian state adjusting its recruitment rules, and public argument in a neighbouring country about how to treat Kyiv. The Sumy strike, with nine dead and 13 injured, was the day's starkest reminder of what was at stake for civilians.