What did the last week of September 2025 change for Kyiv?
A look back at diplomatic restoration with Syria, a Paralympic vote on Russia and Belarus, and a reopened Polish border.
What did a few days in late September 2025 mean for Ukraine's place in the wider region? Looking back at 26 September 2025, the answer lies in a cluster of decisions that touched diplomacy, sport and border security.
Two days earlier, on 24 September 2025, Ukraine and Syria restored diplomatic relations. Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ahmed al-Sharaa met on the sidelines of the eightieth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Ukraine had broken ties in 2022, after the Assad regime recognised Russian-occupied territories. In Ukrainian reporting, the break was linked to Damascus recognising the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in June 2022.
On 26 September 2025 itself, members of the International Paralympic Committee voted not to maintain sanctions against the National Paralympic Committees of Russia and Belarus. For Ukraine, which had pressed its case against Russia across international institutions, the vote was a notable moment in the sporting arena.
The security picture in the neighbourhood also shifted. On 24 September 2025, Poland reopened its border with Belarus. Warsaw had closed it during Russia-led military exercises and cited reduced security risks and economic considerations for the reopening. Those exercises, Zapad 2025, ran from 12 to 16 September 2025 in Belarus. They were the first Zapad drills since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and authorities described a scaled-down format with locations deeper inside Belarus.
A mixed picture
Taken together, the developments pointed in different directions. Kyiv gained a restored diplomatic channel with Damascus, reversing a rupture that came directly from Russia's actions in Ukraine. At the same time, the Paralympic vote went against maintaining sanctions on Russian and Belarusian bodies, and Poland's decision showed a neighbour returning to normal border operations once the drills had ended.
For readers following Ukraine's international standing, the period shows how foreign policy is conducted on several fronts at once: in the corridors of the UN General Assembly, in the governing bodies of international sport, and at the physical borders of Europe.
