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What happened in Ukraine's war on 4 January 2025?
Summary
A look back at a Russian journalist's death in Donetsk Oblast and Moscow's claim about downed ATACMS missiles.
What did the war look like on 4 January 2025? Two developments stood out: the death of a Russian war correspondent in Donetsk Oblast and a Russian claim about American-made missiles.
A war correspondent for the Russian newspaper Izvestia was killed in a Ukrainian drone strike in Donetsk Oblast. The region lies in Ukraine's east, where Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv have been a theatre of operations since the start of the war in February 2022. The death was one of the journalist casualties recorded in the Russo-Ukrainian war.
On the same day, the Russian Armed Forces claimed to have shot down eight American ATACMS missiles fired by Ukraine. The Russian military also vowed retaliation. As reported at the time, the claim was Russia's own account, and the announcement of a promised response added to the pressure along the front.
Taken together, the two events showed the war continuing on several levels: drones reaching a correspondent working in the east, and long-range Western-supplied missiles remaining part of the public exchange between Kyiv and Moscow.
