Category World News

On Saturday, October 25, 2025, how things are going:

Fighting

A man reportedly exploded a grenade on a train station platform in Ovruch, in the Zhytomyr region of Ukraine, killing three people and himself, and injuring 12 others. All three of the victims were women. The attack, which took place close to Belarus’s border with Ukraine, was not connected to Russia’s conflict there, according to the police.
• According to the Ukrinform news website, two people were killed and 23 apartment buildings were damaged by Russian shelling in the Kherson region of Ukraine’s Shumenskyi.
• According to Russian media outlet TASS, two people were killed by Ukrainian shelling in Oleshky, in the region’s Kherson region, citing Volodymyr Saldo, the governor of the area’s newly installed governor, who was installed by Russia.
• According to TASS, Russian forces seized the village of Dronivka in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, citing the Russian defense ministry.
• 111 Ukrainian drones were shot down by Russian forces overnight and into the morning of Friday, according to TASS, citing the Ministry of Defense of Russia.
• According to an “intelligence update” shared on social media, which includes Ukraine’s General Staff, North Korean “uncrewed aerial system]UAS] operators are allegedly assisting Russian forces in firing rockets at Ukrainian positions in Ukraine’s Sumy region.

military assistance

• Russian President Donald Trump should provide Ukraine with weapons, including long-range Tomahawk missiles, according to Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, who told the Politico news agency.

Politics and diplomacy

Following the US’s new sanctions against Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanded that allies sanction all Russian oil companies.
• At a press conference in London, Zelenskyy and other “coalition of the willing” members said, “Sanctions that hit Russian oil – Russian oil infrastructure, Russian oil companies – are a big step,” and that they are.
• The Dutch prime minister, Dick Schoof, agreed with Zelenskyy, saying: “It would be good if the European Union [EU] were to copy the US-UK sanction against Lukoil and Rosneft.”
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, claimed that the sanctions “were not such a big deal” for Russia because they would likely also cause higher oil prices, which would mean that “Russia will simply be selling less oil at a higher price.”
• Dmitriev added that a meeting between Trump and President Putin “will occur,” but “probably at a later time,” in an interview with CNN.
• At Friday’s “coalition of the willing,” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that progress on using frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine must be made “within a short timetable.”

Regional security

After helium weather balloons blew into Lithuania’s two biggest airports, the NATO member shut them down and closed the border crossings with Belarus.
• In response to global conflicts, including Russia’s war in Ukraine, Croatian lawmakers voted to reintroduce mandatory military service.

Helium weather balloons descended into Lithuania’s two biggest airports and closed crossings with Belarus, marking the third such incident to occur in the Baltic nation this month.

In recent weeks, drone sightings and other airborne incursions have caused chaos in European aviation, including at airports in Copenhagen, Munich, and the Baltic region.

Authorities said the airports in Vilnius and Kaunas were closed until 2 a.m. (23:00 GMT), while the border crossings in Belarus will remain closed until Sunday, midday, for safety reasons.

Lithuania has claimed that balloons are being sent by smugglers to transport illegal cigarettes, but it also points fingers at Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, for failing to stop the practice.

According to Lithuania’s Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, “The National Security Commission will meet next week to assess what can be done in the short-term that would hurt the smugglers and Lukashenko’s regime, which allows them to thrive.”

“Twounds of balloons” were discovered by radar on Friday, according to Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Centre.

Authorities reported that the Vilnius airport was closed on Tuesday of this week and on October 5 when smuggler balloons entered the city’s airspace.

Two Russian military aircraft briefly entered Lithuania’s airspace in what appeared to be a new incident coming from Moscow.

When the two aircraft flew 700 meters (0.43 miles) into Lithuania on Thursday at 6pm local time (15:00 GMT), the Lithuanian military said in a statement that they may have been carrying out refueling exercises in the nearby Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

In response to that incursion, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda stated on X that his nation would immediately summon Russian ambassador representatives in protest of reckless and dangerous behavior. “This is a blatant violation of international law and territorial integrity of…

The Russian government’s Ministry of Defense, however, refuted the claim that an incursion had occurred.

According to the statement, the flights were carried out “in strict compliance” with regulations and “did not deviate from their route and did not infringe on the borders of other states.”

In recent weeks, Russian aircraft and drones have reportedly stricken Estonia and Poland’s airspace.

South Africa, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Burkinabe are all now included on the “grey list” of nations that are being monitored more closely, according to a global watchdog for money-laundering.

Following “successful on-site visits” that demonstrated “positive progress” in addressing shortcomings within agreed timeframes, the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF), a financial crimes watchdog based in France, announced on Friday that it would remove the four nations.

Countries that the FATF has identified as not meeting its standards are listed on “grey” and “black” lists. It views grey list nations as those whose anti-money laundering policies have “strategic deficiencies,” but which are still working with the organization to address them.

Elisa de Anda Madrazo, president of FATF, described the removal of the four as “a positive story for Africa’s continent.”

She said that South Africa improved its methods for identifying money laundering and terrorist financing, Nigeria improved coordination between organizations, Mozambique increased sharing financial intelligence, and Burkinabe strengthened its oversight of financial institutions.

In 2023, Nigeria and South Africa were added, followed by Burkinabe in 2021, Mozambique in 2022, and Burkinabe in 2021.

Officials from the four nations welcomed the decision, which means the organization will no longer have to monitor them more closely.

The country’s Financial Intelligence Unit, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, added that the delisting represented a “major milestone in Nigeria’s journey toward economic reform, institutional integrity, and global credibility,” and that it had “worked resolutely through a 19-point action plan” to demonstrate its commitment to improvement.

The South African Revenue Service’s commissioner, Edward Kieswetter, praised the update, saying that “removing the designation of grey listing is not a finish line but a milestone on a long-term journey toward building a robust and resilient financial ecosystem.”

Although Mozambican officials had been expressing for several months that they were optimistic about being removed, the leaders of Mozambique and Burkinabe refused to comment right away.

When the FATF’s assessment in 2030 is done, Mozambique will find a completely different situation from the one found in 2021, according to Finance Minister Carla Louveira in July.

More than 200 nations around the world have pledged to uphold the FATF’s standards when it evaluates their efforts to stop money laundering, as well as terrorist and weapons financing.