ZURICH, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Last year was the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since 2022, driven by intensified hostilities along the front line and the expanded use of long-range weapons, the U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said on Monday.
Conflict-related violence in Ukraine killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in 2025, a 31% rise in the number of victims from 2024, the monitor said in a monthly update on civilian harm.
The vast majority of the casualties verified by the watchdog occurred in Ukrainian government-controlled territory from attacks launched by Russian armed forces, the statement added. Ukrainian officials generally cite the U.N. figures as accurate.
Increased efforts by Russian armed forces to capture territory in 2025 resulted in the killing and injuring of civilians, destruction of vital infrastructure, halting of essential services and new waves of displacement in frontline areas, the monitor said.
Almost two-thirds of all casualties last year occurred in frontline areas, with older persons particularly affected as they remained in their villages. Civilian casualties caused by short-range drones also increased sharply, it added.
“The expanded use of short-range drones has rendered many areas near the frontline effectively uninhabitable,” said Danielle Bell, head of the monitoring mission.
“In 2025, many people who had endured years of hostilities were ultimately compelled to leave their homes.”
Hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides are believed to have been injured or killed in Europe’s deadliest war since World War Two, although neither side releases full figures.
Thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed, particularly in 2022, the war’s first year, during a long Russian siege of the port of Mariupol and assaults on cities before the front line hardened in place.
Since then, Moscow has continued to use missiles and drones to strike cities across Ukraine. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians, but says its attacks on Ukrainian civil infrastructure are justified because it hinders the war effort. Ukraine also targets civil infrastructure in Russia and Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, though on a far smaller scale.
The U.N. statement said an increase in the use of long-range weapons by the Russian armed forces starting in June 2025 also caused an increase in civilian harm in urban centres across Ukraine.
“The sharp increase in long-range attacks and the targeting of Ukraine’s national energy infrastructure mean that the consequences of the war are now felt by civilians far beyond the frontline,” Bell said.
Russian authorities reported that attacks by Ukrainian armed forces killed 253 civilians and injured 1,872 in the Russian Federation last year, the monitor said. Due to lack of access and limited publicly available information, the watchdog could not verify these numbers, it added.
(Reporting by Ariane LuthiEditing by Miranda Murray, Peter Graff)
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