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STATEMENT BY THE DELEGATION OF UKRAINE ON RUSSIA’S WAR OF AGGRESSION AGAINST UKRAINE
97th Joint FSC-PC Session (26 November 2025) Agenda Item 2, General Statements Mr Chairperson, I would like to deliver a statement on the subject of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
Since our last discussion on this issue, the situation has continued to deteriorate due to the Kremlin regime’s relentless pursuit of imperial ambitions. Despite repeated international calls to end the war and various peace initiatives, Moscow has only escalated its efforts, seeking to annihilate Ukraine’s sovereignty and its people.
Over the past year, Russia has increasingly relied on overwhelming volumes of mass-produced drones to compensate for battlefield losses and to exhaust Ukraine’s air defences. This evolution is not accidental – it is strategic, methodical, and aimed at terrorizing millions.
Since 2022, Russia has launched more than 112,000 “Geran” and “Gerbera” attack UAVs at Ukrainian territory. Let me underline: 112,000 drones used not to achieve legitimate military objectives, but to destroy homes, energy infrastructure, transport hubs, hospitals, schools and kindergartens. Children have been killed. Families torn apart. Entire districts levelled. Ukraine condemns these attacks unequivocally. There is no military rationale that could conceal their true purpose – to break the civilian population and to make survival itself a battlefield.
Just in the past week, Russia launched 1,555 UAVs and 72 missiles, including aero-ballistic missiles. This was not random fire – it was targeted, systematic violence against civilians.
The 19 November strike on Ternopil was a deliberate attack on a residential building in the heart of a peaceful Ukrainian city – carried out with Kh-101 cruise 2 missiles designed to kill with precision. One of these missiles – we can confirm – was manufactured in the fourth quarter of 2025, only weeks ago. This means that while Russia was negotiating, speaking in international fora, and claiming readiness for “dialogue”, its factories were producing missiles designed to kill civilians.
The consequences of this brutal attack were devastating: 33 people lost their lives, 94 were injured, including 18 children; 6 more remain missing, their families waiting in unbearable uncertainty. This was a deliberate strike on families beginning their morning – on people making breakfast, getting children ready for school, or still asleep. Russia turned their homes into rubble in a matter of seconds. This is not warfare — it is the intentional annihilation of civilian life. It is a war crime, executed with missiles that contain foreign-made components enabling Russia to sustain its terror. Ternopil now stands as a symbol of the brutality of this aggression and a reminder that every failure to stop Russia today means another destroyed city tomorrow.
This tragedy could have been prevented if Russia had not been able to circumvent already-imposed restrictions and obtain foreign technologies for its military-industrial complex. Every component that reaches a Russian weapons plant is a potential civilian life lost. Ukraine condemns the attack on Ternopil in the strongest possible terms.
Another brutal attack took place on 22 November, when Russia struck the Orlivka crossing point in the Odesa region, right at Ukraine’s border with Romania. It was a calculated attempt to expand risks beyond Ukraine and to test the resilience – and the limits – of European security. Ukraine strongly condemns this reckless act.
On 25 November, Russia once again carried out a massive strike against Ukraine, launching 460 drones and 22 missiles of various types, including aero-ballistic missiles. The main target was again the capital of Ukraine and the surrounding region. Numerous residential buildings and civilian infrastructure objects were damaged in Kyiv. As of now, we know of 8 people killed and 34 injured, including 4 children. There was also destruction in the Odesa region: strikes on ports, food storage and infrastructure – with no military sense whatsoever.
We know that four drones flew towards our neighbours – Moldova and Romania. This is yet another reminder that Russian aggression directly threatens not only Ukraine, but also other European countries. We express our solidarity with our partners in the Odesa Triangle – Romania and Moldova – and we firmly condemn these reckless actions of Russia.
No one, except Russia, wants this war to last even one more day. It is Russia that must be compelled to stop the bloodshed, terror and escalation. This can be achieved through the unity of all allies, sufficient strengthening of Ukraine, and strict 3 measures against the Kremlin’s war machine. As my Minister Andrii Sybiha mentioned: “Ukraine is committed to peaceful efforts, and we emphasize the need to use all available means to force the aggressor to stop the war”.
Colleagues, As Russia pursues this campaign of terror, it continues another crime often overlooked but deeply revealing – the forced mobilization of Ukrainian citizens in the territories it occupies. According to the Ukrainian Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, Russia has already coerced over 47,000 Ukrainians into its armed forces. This is a direct violation of Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from compelling protected persons into military service.
Let me emphasize one more fact: one in six Russian POWs captured by Ukraine originates from these occupied territories – people forced to fight against their own state. This is not only illegal – it is inhumane, cynical, and morally indefensible.
The attacks of recent weeks – from Ternopil to Odesa, from Kh-101 terror to drone swarms – reveal a truth that must be acknowledged plainly: Russia is not only violating the rules of European security – it is attempting to make rules irrelevant.
If the OSCE is to remain meaningful, it must do more than record violations. It must uphold the principles that define European security. This is not merely about Ukraine’s survival. It is about the survival of the idea that borders cannot be changed by force, that civilians cannot be deliberately targeted, and that aggressors cannot act with impunity.
Colleagues, Ukraine will continue to defend its people and its sovereignty. But we also defend something larger — the principles on which Europe has been built since 1975: sovereignty, territorial integrity, human dignity, and the right of nations to exist free from coercion. These principles do not erode in a single moment. They erode when crimes are tolerated, when terror is ignored, and when aggression becomes normalized. Ukraine will not allow this.
Ukraine remains firmly committed to a just and lasting peace based on the principles of international law, including the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act. We have stated this before and reiterate now that the bloodshed must come to an end.
Thank you, Mr Chairperson.