2025 was the deadliest year for civilians in Ukraine since 2022, according to the United Nations (UN).
Conflict-related violence killed at least 2,514 civilians last year, the UN’s Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said, compared with 2,088 in 2024 and 1,974 in 2023. The number of injured civilians also increased sharply each year.
The year’s deadliest attack killed at least 38 civilians in the western city of Ternopil in November, it reported, including eight children.
Meanwhile, President Zelensky said overnight Russian strikes across Ukraine had killed four people in Kharkiv and left “several hundred thousand households” without power in and around Kyiv amid freezing temperatures.
The total number of civilians killed and injured in 2025 represented a 31% increase on 2024, and 70% on 2023, according to the UN mission.
It reported the following figures:
2025: 2,514 killed, 12,142 injured
2024: 2,088 killed, 9,138 injured
2023: 1,974 killed, 6,651 injured
It previously said at least 8,006 civilians were killed and 13,287 injured in the first 12 months after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
The mission’s chief Danielle Bell said 2025’s figures represented “a marked deterioration in the protection of civilians”.
“Our monitoring shows that this rise was driven not only by intensified hostilities along the frontline, but also by the expanded use of long-range weapons, which exposed civilians across the country to heightened risk.”
Separately, Zelensky said almost 300 drones and 18 missiles had targeted cities across the country overnight, causing a major power outage near Kyiv.
The city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said air defences were in operation during what the military said had been a missile attack. The CEO of energy company Yasno said the whole city had gone into “emergency shutdowns” as a result.
Parts of the capital had already faced days without heating and electricity in freezing temperatures due to strikes last week.
Zelensky said four people were killed in a missile strike “without any military purpose whatsoever” on a postal terminal in Korotych, Kharkiv, in which the region’s governor said 10 people had been injured.
Elsewhere, the governor of Donetsk Vadym Filashkin said two were killed in strikes across the region, while officials in Odesa said six people were injured by strikes which damaged homes, energy facilities, a hospital and a kindergarten.
Kyiv said it had also launched its own attack overnight on a drone manufacturing plant in Russia’s western Rostov region.
The latest attacks came two days after Russia’s full-scale invasion hit its 1,418th day on Sunday – the same length of the Soviet army’s participation in World War Two.
The EU’s ambassador to Ukraine Katarina Matheronva wrote on social media: “Back then, the USSR was attacked, fought back, and – thanks to massive Western support – ended the war victorious… Today, Putin chose this war. Planned it. Launched it. Owns it.”