Kryvyi Rih hotel strike amid paused US aid

What did the war look like on 5 March 2025? It was a day in which a Russian missile struck a hotel in Kryvyi Rih, killing four people and injuring seven others, while the strategic backdrop had shifted two days earlier.

On 3 March 2025, the US President, Donald Trump, paused all US military aid to Ukraine with immediate effect. The decision came into force as Russian strikes on Ukrainian cities continued, and the Kryvyi Rih attack fell within that period.

A city under repeated fire

Kryvyi Rih had already been subjected to a series of artillery and air attacks during the war. The strike on the hotel added to that record, with four dead and seven injured.

Strikes in both directions

The fighting was not one-directional. On 4 March 2025, a Ukrainian drone hit an oil pipeline in Rostov Oblast in Russia, and the pipeline burned for several hours before firefighters put out the blaze. Russia also reported that its air defence units repelled another drone attack near Novoshakhtinsk.

What the sequence shows

Taken together, the three events mark a stretch of three days in which Washington suspended its military aid, Ukraine continued to target energy infrastructure on Russian territory, and Russia continued to hit Ukrainian cities. No causal link between the aid pause and the strikes was reported at the time, and none should be assumed. What can be said is that the pause took effect while the war's tempo, on both sides of the border, did not slow.