Ukraine Live Update 2025: Kyiv’s New Counteroffensive Sparks Major Shift in War

KYIV—As early-winter temperatures dip below freezing, the battle for eastern Ukraine is intensifying around the strategic rail hub of Pokrovsk, where Russian troops are mounting their first concerted push of the season. Moscow’s defence ministry claimed incremental gains in the city’s rubble-filled western districts after days of artillery saturation and glide-bomb strikes, but Ukraine’s General Staff said infantry assaults had been “repelled and contained,” with elite special-operations units reinforcing exhausted brigades on the ground. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signalled that holding Pokrovsk is critical to preventing Russian armour from threatening the industrial cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last major urban strongholds Kyiv controls in Donetsk oblast. “Each metre we keep here protects tens of kilometres behind us,” he said during a late-night video address, urging Western partners to accelerate artillery-shell deliveries before stocks dip below the 20,000-rounds-per-day threshold Ukrainian planners deem necessary to blunt the offensive. Fresh air-defence capabilities are also arriving. Kyiv confirmed the first US-made Patriot PAC-3 battery reached the country on 1 November, expanding a patchwork network that already includes IRIS-T, NASAMS and SAMP/T launchers. The system’s radar coverage, according to Air Force spokesperson Yuriy Ihnat, is being integrated “within hours” to shield electricity substations that were systematically targeted by cruise-missile salvos last winter, plunging millions into darkness. Military analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War note that Russia is shifting to a “pressure-and-paralyse” winter strategy aimed at exhausting Ukrainian air defences and triggering a new refugee wave toward EU borders. Satellite imagery reviewed by ISW shows an uptick in Kalibr missiles loaded onto Black Sea Fleet frigates, while Shahed drone launch sites have been re-deployed deeper inside occupied Crimea to complicate Ukrainian counter-strikes. On the economic front, Naftogaz warned of a “deliberate energy siege” after drone fragments damaged two natural-gas compressor stations in Poltava region. Repair crews restored flow within nine hours, but costs are mounting: the energy ministry estimates that since October 1, Moscow’s attacks have destroyed generating capacity equal to 12 % of the national grid. To cushion households, the government extended price caps on electricity and introduced tax breaks for businesses investing in off-grid solar installations. Humanitarian agencies are bracing for another displacement spike. The UN’s International Organization for Migration recorded 134,000 newly displaced people in October alone, a 37 % jump over September. Local NGOs report acute shortages of winter clothing and diesel generators in frontline oblasts; volunteers are appealing for international donations of high-efficiency wood stoves and thermal blankets as the first heavy snow is forecast within a week. Diplomatically, foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said the EU’s proposed €50 billion, four-year Ukraine Facility “must be finalised before Christmas” to reassure investors and support Kyiv’s 2026 accession talks. Meanwhile, US congressional leaders hinted a bridge-funding package for Ukraine and Israel could reach President Biden’s desk by mid-November, though partisan divisions over border-security riders persist. With both armies entrenching for months of attritional combat, commanders agree that logistics—munitions, power, heat—will determine momentum more than territorial breakthroughs. As one Ukrainian platoon leader near Pokrovsk put it, “Winter is a weapon, and whoever wields it smarter will decide the spring offensive.”