What did the last week of May 2025 signal?

What did the final days of May 2025 reveal about the direction of the war? Looking back at 31 May 2025, three developments from the preceding week stand out, and together they frame the day.

The largest air attack

On 25 May 2025, Russian forces launched their largest air attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, including on the capital, Kyiv. At least 298 Iranian Shahed drones and 69 missiles were fired at Ukrainian cities overnight. At least 14 people were killed and dozens more wounded.

Restrictions lifted

On 26 May 2025, German chancellor Friedrich Merz announced that Germany and several other NATO allies had lifted all restrictions on Ukraine's use of long-range weaponry inside Russia. Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov responded that the decision ran contrary to efforts to reach a political settlement to end the war.

The sequence is worth noting: the announcement came the day after the heaviest strike of the war on Ukrainian cities. The two events were reported separately, and no official link between them was stated at the time. What can be said is that the Kremlin framed the allied decision as an obstacle to negotiation, while Ukraine had just endured an assault on a scale not seen before.

A look inside Russian procurement

On 28 May 2025, more than two million documents from a public database for contractors were published. They covered Russian military procurement, including the modernisation and build-up of the Strategic Missile Forces, the military base at Yasny, and the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle. The material offered a view of Russia's longer-term military planning, running alongside the immediate battlefield pressure.

Why it matters in retrospect

The three items point in different directions. One showed the scale of Russia's present capacity to strike Ukrainian cities. Another showed allied governments widening what Ukraine could target, and Moscow objecting in terms of a political settlement. The third showed the weapons programmes behind Russia's strategic forces. Observers sometimes describe such tensions between Russia and NATO states as a new Cold War, a label that some commentators use and others discourage.

By 31 May 2025, the picture was of escalation on several fronts at once: in the air over Ukraine, in the rules governing Western-supplied arms, and in public knowledge of Russia's military build-up.