What did 25 February 2026 reveal about Ukraine's pressures?
A look back at a day when a court ruling, an arrest in Germany and a strike inside Russia unfolded against a backdrop of pipeline tensions with neighbours.
What did 25 February 2026 show about the pressures on Ukraine, at home and abroad? It was a day of legal, criminal and military news, set against a diplomatic dispute that had sharpened in the preceding days.
A legal first at home
On 25 February 2026, the Supreme Court confirmed the case of Kis and Levchuk. According to the report, it was the first time in Ukrainian judicial practice that a court confirmed the establishment of the fact that a same-sex couple lived together as one family, in a de facto marital relationship.
An arrest in Germany
The same day, a suspect in the 2025 killing of the politician Andriy Portnov was arrested in Heinsberg, Germany.
A strike inside Russia
Also on 25 February 2026, a Ukrainian drone strike on a fertilizer plant just outside Dorogobuzh, in Russia's Smolensk Oblast, killed seven people and injured ten others.
The days before
The preceding days had been tense. On 23 February, Russian forces launched a wave of missile and drone strikes across Ukraine, killing four people, including two civilians in Odesa. The same day, seven police officers were injured, two of them seriously, in a bombing targeting police vehicles at a filling station in Mykolaiv.
On 24 February, the anniversary of Russia's invasion, millions of people in the United States and Europe expressed solidarity with Ukraine. Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service also accused France and the United Kingdom of preparing to supply Ukraine with a nuclear weapon, and the Russian foreign ministry warned that such a move would lead to a direct conflict between NATO states and Russia.
The Druzhba dispute
The sharpest diplomatic friction concerned oil. On 23 February, Slovakia's prime minister, Robert Fico, announced the suspension of emergency electricity supplies to Ukraine unless oil transit through the Druzhba pipeline resumed, after a disruption that Slovakia attributed to Ukraine. On 24 February, Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, announced that Hungary had ended all support for Ukraine, including through the European Union framework, until Ukraine resumed oil transfers via Druzhba.
As later described, the dispute centred on the total halt of Russian crude oil transit through the southern leg of the pipeline, which followed a Russian drone strike on 27 January 2026 that severely damaged infrastructure near the Brody oil hub in western Ukraine. It came one year after the 2025 Slovak–Ukraine gas dispute.
Taken together, 25 February 2026 combined a milestone in the courts, progress in a high-profile criminal case, continued strikes across the front line and beyond, and a strained relationship with two neighbouring governments.
