Here are the key events on day 1,300 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 16 Sep 2025
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Here is how things stand on Tuesday, September 16 :
Fighting
- A Ukrainian drone attack killed two women in the village of Golovchino in Russia’s Belgorod region, Russia’s state TASS news agency reports.
- A man who was seriously injured in a Ukrainian drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region in April has died in hospital, TASS reports.
- TASS also reported that Russian forces shot down 82 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period.
- Russian forces have captured the village of Olhivske in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 59 of 84 Russian drones fired overnight, while Russia also fired three guided missiles.
- The commander of Ukraine’s drone forces, Robert Brovdi, reported that a Starlink outage affected the entire front line for about 30 minutes, starting at 7:28am local time (04:28 GMT). Ukraine’s forces are heavily reliant on SpaceX’s Starlink terminals for battlefield communications and some drone operations.
Regional security
- Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said that Poland’s State Protection Service “neutralised a drone operating over government buildings” and the Presidential Palace. Police are investigating the drone incident, and two citizens of Belarus have been detained, Tusk added in a post on X.
- Announcing that the United Kingdom will deploy fighter jets to Poland, Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, “Russia’s reckless behaviour is a direct threat to European security and a violation of international law, which is why the UK will support NATO’s efforts to bolster its eastern flank.”
- The UK Foreign Office on Monday called the recent Russian drone incursions into Polish and Romanian airspace “utterly unacceptable”, and summoned Russian Ambassador Andrei Kelin.
- “Russia should understand that its continued aggression only strengthens the unity between NATO allies,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.
Drones fly with flags of Russia and Belarus during the ‘Zapad 2025’ (West 2025) Russian-Belarusian military drills at a training ground near the town of Borisov, east of Belarus’s capital, Minsk, on Monday [Olesya Kurpyayeva/AF]
- Russia and Belarus continued their Zapad 2025 joint military drills on Monday, with Russia launching a Kalibr missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
- United States military officers observed the joint war games in Belarus, where they were told by Belarusian Minister of Defence Viktor Khrenin that they could look at “whatever is of interest for you”.
- Denmark’s defence minister attended a military exercise in Greenland on Monday with his Icelandic and Norwegian counterparts, the Danish Ministry of Defence said. The US did not send observers.
- Danish Minister of Defence Troels Lund Poulsen said in a statement: “The current security situation requires us to significantly strengthen the armed forces’ presence in the Arctic and North Atlantic.”
Tariffs and sanctions
- US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday that the administration of President Donald Trump would not impose additional tariffs on Chinese goods to halt China’s purchases of Russian oil unless European countries hit China and India with steep duties of their own.
- “We expect the Europeans to do their share now, and we are not moving forward without the Europeans,” Bessent said.
- Russia warned on Monday that it would go after any European state that sought to take its assets after reports that the European Union was looking for new ways to leverage hundreds of billions of dollars of frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine.