Ukraine and Russia have traded strikes targeting each other’s energy infrastructure as the war heads into the winter months. Moscow’s attacks have repeatedly plunged parts of Ukraine into blackouts, while Kyiv has hit Russia’s oil refinery capabilities.
Saturday 1 November 2025 18:35, UK
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We’re pausing our live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
Before we go, here’s a recap of the key developments over the last 24 hours.
More than 100 nurseries across Russia have started offering military training courses to children since its invasion of Ukraine, according to estimates by independent Russian media outlet Verstka.
Pre-school children are reportedly being taught to march, practice hand-to-hand combat and handle firearms.
Some groups are connected to the police, border guard, defence ministry and the Kremlin.
“The reported increase in military cadet programmes in Russian nurseries forms part of the highly likely continuing militarisation of Russian education,” says the UK Ministry of Defence.
“It is likely that the politicisation and militarisation of Russian education, coupled with increasing ideological indoctrination of Russian children more broadly, will perpetuate aggressive, expansionist Russian nationalism in the longer term.”
Pictures show apartment buildings damaged by a Russian military strike in the frontline town of Kostiantynivka.
Elsewhere in the Donetsk settlement, drone nets can be seen lining a road.
Ukraine’s top military commander says his troops are still holding out in Pokrovsk, despite Russian claims of surrender.
Capturing Pokrovsk would be the most important Russian territorial gain inside Ukraine since Avdiivka in early 2024, after one of the bloodiest battles of the war.
Russia has been trying to capture Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk”, since mid-2024 in its campaign to control the entirety of the region.
The Russian defence ministry’s Zvezda news outlet said earlier that Ukrainian troops were beginning to lay down arms inside Pokrovsk.
“We are holding Pokrovsk,” Ukraine’s army chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Facebook.
“A comprehensive operation to destroy and dislodge enemy forces from Pokrovsk is ongoing.”
Deepstate, a Ukrainian map of the front line made by compiling data from open-source images, shows Russian troops in full control of a small southern part of the city, with the rest still depicted as a grey zone, controlled by neither force.
The city, home to 70,000 people before the war, has been all but completely destroyed and depopulated.
Sky News cannot independently verify these battlefield reports.
As claim and counterclaim emerge from the embattled eastern city of Pokrovsk, a Ukrainian military source has denied Russian claims that it killed an 11-strong special forces rushed in to support defences.
Russian forces, Moscow said, defeated the team that was seen disembarking from a Black Hawk Helicopter yesterday, and pushed back an attempt by Ukraine’s 425th Separate Assault Regiment “Skala” to break out of Hryshyne, northwest of Pokrovsk.
But the Ukrainian source said the special forces had not been killed and added that the Ukrainian operation aimed at stabilising the area was still underway, despite Russian claims of surrender.
Pokrovsk has been dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, and capturing it would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Battles around Hryshyne are significant, as they indicate Russian forces are close to cutting off Ukrainian supply lines to Pokrovsk.
Sky News cannot independently verify these battlefield reports.
At any one moment, there are dozens of developing stories across the war in Ukraine.
Here, we highlight five of the stories we think you should keep an eye on for the coming weeks.
Energy strikes
As we’ve been reporting this morning, Ukraine and Russia overnight hit each other’s energy infrastructure.
Moscow has been striking Ukraine’s energy systems, plunging it into intermittent blackouts in recent weeks – copying the tactic it employed in recent winters.
Even with Ukraine trying to prepare as best it can, the G7 said today it was hoping to help as well.
These attacks will likely continue moving forward and be a key part of how the war unfolds during the winter.
Ukraine looking deeper into Russia
The size of Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia has grown in recent weeks.
While still dwarfed by Russia’s own, increasingly, drones have been said to be heading towards Moscow as well.
This has followed Kyiv seeking to improve its offensive capabilities – more on that next.
Long-range missiles
“Just look at how nervous by the way Putin became when this topic came up, he understands that long-range weapons can change the course of the war,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the EU last month.
The possibility of long-range missiles would open the door to Ukraine striking back harder and further into Russia, going hand-in-hand with its drone strikes.
They have been a focus of much of Ukraine’s recent diplomatic efforts and expect that to continue moving forward into the winter.
The EU and frozen Russian assets
Last month, the EU met in Brussels, with Zelenskyy invited along.
The meeting was heavily hinted at being the breakthrough when the bloc would agree to use hundreds of billions of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war.
But it faced internal opposition, especially from the Belgian PM, which scuppered the plans.
The same plans will be debated again in the EU’s next meeting on 18 and 19 December.
The move could unlock enough money to fund Kyiv’s military for the next two years – giving Ukraine a significant boost – or it could leave them looking for new ways to generate much-needed money.
Donald Trump
The US president is difficult to avoid when it comes to the war in Ukraine.
Trump promised no more “forever wars” for the US, but has been willing to wade in diplomatically at least.
He has often met with Putin or Zelenskyy, or other Western leaders.
He is seen as the key difference maker between Kyiv and Moscow, able to boost Ukraine’s military capabilities and, some believe, force Russia to the negotiation table if he so wished.
Our US correspondent David Blevins runs through Trump and Zelenskyy’s latest meeting on 17 October…
In Russia’s latest overnight attack, it launched 223 drones at Ukraine, the country’s air force says.
Of these, it says it shot down 206, with strikes being recorded at seven separate locations.
Throughout the morning, the air force has been warning of further attacks.
This has included drone and missile attacks in several regions, including Sumy, Kherson, Poltava and Zaporizhia.
Ukraine has accused five Russian soldiers of “murders, torture, [and] attempts to hide war crimes by burning the bodies of executed Buch residents”.
It says that the soldiers killed 17 civilians as part of the terror they inflicted on the Ukrainian town.
In a press release, it names the five soldiers, including sharing their addresses, and says they committed the atrocities during the occupation of Bucha in 2022.
The town, outside the capital city Kyiv, saw Russian troops leave a trail of death and destruction when they captured it in the early stages of the war.
When Moscow’s forces withdrew, images emerged of dead bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, seemingly shot at close range.
Satellite imagery also revealed a makeshift mass grave outside a church in the town.
Now, Ukrainian intelligence says it has identified “five executioners” it accuses of being responsible for “war crimes in Bucha”.
Ukrainian soldiers trapped in the key eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk have started surrendering, the Russian Defence Ministry claims in a report by the TASS state news agency.
The report claims the city has been encircled by Russian forces.
But Ukraine’s military has pushed back on the report, saying the situation in the city is ‘complicated and dynamic’.
They claim their positions in some districts of Pokrovsk have improved.
One of today’s main stories has been about the fighting in and around the frontline city of Pokrovsk.
In our 10.15 post, we brought you the news of Russian claims to have shot down some Ukrainian back-up, and we looked at the wider picture across the frontlines in our 8.50 post.
Now here’s a bit more from inside Pokrovsk:
The pincer movement has almost fully encircled Pokrovsk.
Russia’s forces are reportedly using it to send in smaller units and drones to try and disrupt Ukraine’s logistics and create chaos.
This carves out what Russian military bloggers have called a grey zone in the city where neither side has control and neither can defend.
Despite this, it still isn’t clear if Russia is actually closer to taking the city.
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