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What Ukraine's security picture looked like by 27 January 2025
Summary
A look back at the reports from 24 January 2025 on repatriated bodies, mobilisation reform and drone strikes in both directions.
What did the security picture in the war look like on 27 January 2025? The most recent reports available that day, dated 24 January, pointed to pressure on several fronts at once: the human cost, the manpower question and the long-range drone war.
The human cost
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. On the same date, a Russian drone struck a ten-storey apartment building in Fastiv, in Kyiv Oblast, killing at least three people.
Manpower
Kyiv also finalised military reforms aimed at recruiting 18- to 25-year-olds into the armed forces and penalising draft dodgers. The reforms lowered the minimum compulsory military service age from 27 to 25. Taken together, these measures concerned how Ukraine would keep its armed forces supplied with personnel.
Drones across the border
Ukraine, for its part, targeted an oil refinery in Russia's Ryazan Oblast with drones, 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 reports from that date show a war in which both sides were striking beyond the front line, while Ukraine was adjusting its recruitment rules and receiving the remains of its fallen soldiers.
