On Friday, hundreds of demonstrators took to the streets of Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, to push the Ukrainian government to reject controversial draft legislation that relatives of missing service members argue would enable premature declarations of death for their unaccounted-for loved ones. The demonstration centered on Bill No. 13646, a proposal designed to formalize the legal status of people listed as missing in the ongoing conflict. Protesters warn that specific clauses in the bill would grant Ukrainian courts the authority to rule missing military personnel legally dead before conclusive evidence of their fate is uncovered.
“Today all the families came out so that the missing are not equated with the dead,” explained 27-year-old Mariana Yatselenko, one of the participants in the Kyiv march.
According to Artur Dobrosierdov, Ukraine’s commissioner for missing persons, the country’s unified registry of people disappeared under extraordinary special circumstances currently lists more than 90,000 unaccounted-for individuals. The registry, which launched in May 2023, combines decades of case data covering both military personnel and civilians who went missing during active combat, as a result of Russian armed aggression, or within Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories. While the vast majority of these cases stem from Russia’s full-scale invasion that began on February 24, 2022, some unclosed investigations date back to 2014, when Russian forces seized the Crimean Peninsula and pro-Moscow separatist groups launched an insurgency in eastern Ukraine. This is not the first public demonstration against the bill, highlighting sustained and growing pressure from missing soldiers’ families on the Ukrainian government.
Beyond the domestic protest, violence on the Ukraine-Russia front has escalated sharply in recent days, with long-range strikes targeting territory deep inside both countries. On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that Ukraine had carried out its fourth strike on Russia’s Yaroslavl oil refinery, located roughly 700 kilometers (440 miles) from the Ukrainian border, as part of a sustained campaign to disrupt Russian oil infrastructure and cut off funding for Moscow’s invasion. Meanwhile, Russian officials reported that a Ukrainian drone strike on a college dormitory in occupied Starobilsk, Luhansk Oblast, left four people dead and 39 others wounded, with up to 18 people still potentially trapped under rubble. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called the attack a “heinous crime,” and Ukraine has not issued an official response to the claim. The Russian Defense Ministry also announced Friday that it had intercepted 217 Ukrainian drones across multiple Russian regions, including the Moscow area and St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city.
On the Ukrainian side of the border, Russia launched a massive overnight drone barrage that targeted civilian infrastructure across the country. Ukraine’s air force reported that it successfully shot down or jammed 115 of the 124 Russian drones launched in the attack, the latest in a months-long escalation of regular Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian areas. The United Nations has verified a 21% increase in Ukrainian civilian casualties over the first four months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, with 815 civilians killed and 4,174 wounded. Friday’s strikes left one civilian dead in Kherson and 11 people, including one child, wounded across Sumy Oblast, according to local Ukrainian officials.
On the battlefield, Western analysts note that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations have retaken more than 400 square kilometers of southern Ukrainian territory from Russian control since the end of 2024. Analysts attribute these gains to Ukraine’s rapidly expanding domestic drone and missile manufacturing industry, as well as Russian forces being cut off from access to Starlink satellite services, which are widely used to guide drone strikes. In Washington, the Trump administration approved a modest $108 million arms package for Ukraine Thursday evening, which includes components for ground-based Hawk midrange air defense systems, spare parts, and logistical support. The approval marks a small new tranche of support after the Trump administration made deep cuts to U.S. military aid for Ukraine over the past year.
Diplomatic efforts led by the U.S. to end the full-scale conflict have failed to deliver meaningful progress and have largely stalled in recent months, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed during a diplomatic trip to Sweden. “They were not fruitful, unfortunately,” Rubio said of talks held over the past year with both Russian and Ukrainian delegations. He added that no active negotiations are currently underway, though the U.S. would be open to resuming talks if a path to progress emerges.
Ukrainian officials are also increasingly warning of potential new military threats from the north, where Russia could launch fresh incursions into northern Ukraine from neighboring Belarus. Zelenskyy wrote on social media Friday that Moscow “is eager to draw (Belarus) deeper into this war,” and warned of “consequences” for the Belarusian government if it allows Russian forces to use its territory as a launching pad for new attacks. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha raised the alarm over the growing threat during a recent NATO meeting in Sweden, calling on allied nations to implement deterrence measures against the Minsk government. Russia and Belarus completed joint nuclear military exercises earlier this week, and the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War has highlighted that Russia retains the capability to use Belarus as a staging ground for future large-scale operations, noting Moscow’s increasing de facto political and military control over the country.
Reporting for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee in Washington, D.C. and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal.