events

These are the key developments from day 1,441 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, February 4:

Fighting

• At least two teenagers were killed, and nine other people were injured following a Russian strike targeting the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
• A 24-hour air raid alert was issued in the Zaporizhia region following the attack, which damaged four high-rise apartment buildings.
• Three people were killed in Ukrainian shelling of the Moscow-occupied southern Ukrainian town of Nova Kakhovka, in the Kherson region, Kremlin-installed authorities said.
• Russia launched an overnight attack described as the “most powerful” this year on Ukraine’s battered energy facilities, officials in Kyiv said, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heating amid glacial winter temperatures and in advance of talks to end the four-year war.

• The latest Russian operation against Ukraine’s energy sector was the biggest since the start of 2026, Ukraine’s leading private energy company DTEK said on Telegram.

• A power plant in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv was also badly damaged in the Russian attack, Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The attack on Kharkiv also injured at least five people, according to officials.

• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said that Russia deployed 450 attack drones and more than 60 missiles during the onslaught and accused Moscow of waiting for temperatures to drop before carrying out the strikes.

• A power plant in Kyiv’s eastern Darnytskyi district was seriously damaged in the Russian attack, Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Telegram, prompting officials to redirect resources to restoring heating to thousands of residents in the city.

• At least 1,142 high-rise apartment blocks have been left without heating in the Ukrainian capital following the Russian attacks, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of launching “a deliberate attack against energy infrastructure”, which he said involved “a record number of ballistic missiles”.
• Zelenskyy also said that Russia had exploited the recent brief United States-backed truce on attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to stockpile weapons, which had been used in the latest attacks. The latest Russian strikes came a day before the next scheduled trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday.
• Part of the gigantic Motherland monument in Kyiv, an iconic Soviet-era World War II memorial featuring a woman holding a sword and a shield, was damaged during the latest Russian attack, with Ukrainian Culture Minister Tetyana Berezhna describing the damage inflicted as “both symbolic and cynical”.

• In remarks following the Tuesday attacks, US President Donald Trump defended Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that he “kept his word” and had stuck to a short-term deal halting strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure until Sunday.
• Trump’s spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, had said earlier that the US president was not surprised by the attacks.
• NATO chief Mark Rutte, during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, said that Russia’s overnight attacks did not suggest Moscow was serious about making peace.

Military aid

• Sweden and Denmark will jointly procure and supply Ukraine with air defence systems worth 2.6 billion Swedish crowns ($290m) to help it defend against Russian attacks, Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson and his Danish counterpart, Troels Lund Poulsen, announced.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine has agreed with Western partners that any persistent Russian violations of a future ceasefire agreement would trigger a coordinated military response from Europe and the US, the Financial Times reported, citing people briefed on the discussions.

• French President Emmanuel Macron said he was preparing to resume dialogue with Putin nearly four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but he stressed that Moscow was not showing any “real willingness” to negotiate a ceasefire.

• UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to Trump and discussed the situation in Ukraine, including the overnight Russian attacks on the country, the United Kingdom government said.

• Reaching a peace deal to end Russia’s war will require tough choices, NATO’s Rutte said in an address to Ukraine’s parliament during his Kyiv visit.

Economy

• The Kremlin said it had heard no statements from India about halting purchases of sanctioned Russian oil after Trump announced that New Delhi had agreed to stop such purchases as part of a trade accord with Washington.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia was carefully analysing Trump’s remarks on the trade deal with India. He added that despite the recent announcement, Moscow intends “to further develop our bilateral relations with Delhi”.

• Russia’s economy grew by 1 percent in 2025, Putin said, marking a much slower expansion compared with the 2024 figure, as the country stutters under the burden of its war on Ukraine and international sanctions. Putin acknowledged during a government meeting that growth is “lower” than the two previous years.

Sport

• Russia welcomed remarks by FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who said he wanted Russia’s four-year ban from international football tournaments lifted because it had “achieved nothing”, Peskov said, describing Infantino’s comments as “very good”.
• Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi called Infantino’s comments “irresponsible” and “infantile”, noting that Russia’s invasion had killed more than 650 Ukrainian athletes and coaches.
• Ukrainian athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych said the International Olympic Committee’s allowing Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals, despite their links to occupied territories or expressions of support for Moscow’s war on Ukraine, undermined the principle of neutrality. He said he intends to use the Winter Olympic Games to draw attention to the war in Ukraine.

These are the key developments from day 1,440 of Russia’s war on Ukraine

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, February 2:

Fighting

• The ‍Ukrainian ‍capital, Kyiv, came under attack early on ⁠Tuesday morning from ​Russian missiles, ‍Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s ‍military administration, ⁠said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Tkachenko said several apartment ​buildings ‌and an educational establishment had been damaged. Reuters news agency ‌witnesses reported ‌loud explosions ⁠in the city.

• A father and a son have been killed, and two children and their mother were wounded after Russia struck an area in the front line of the Donetsk region, according to regional authorities.

• A coal mining site in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region was attacked for the second time in 24 hours, according to the private energy producer DTEK. There were no immediate reports on casualties or damage to infrastructure.

Diplomacy and politics

• Russia has largely observed a ceasefire on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Monday, as Kyiv prepared for the next round of trilateral talks with the US and Russia, expected to begin on Wednesday.

• In a separate post on social media, Zelenskyy added that a recent “de-escalation” with Russia – an apparent reference to a brief ceasefire in attacks on energy facilities – was helping to build trust in the negotiations.

• Zelenskyy said in separate remarks that it was realistic to achieve a dignified and lasting peace, in advance of the next round of peace talks with Russian and US officials in the United Arab Emirates. He added that a deal on US security guarantees for Ukraine post-war is now “complete”.

• US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, will travel to Abu Dhabi for the talks with Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday and Thursday, a White House official said.

• Russia would regard the deployment of any foreign military forces or infrastructure in Ukraine as foreign intervention and treat those forces as legitimate targets, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow said, citing Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

• Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said that a proposal by European powers to deploy NATO-member troops in Ukraine as part of a proposed security guarantee and peace deal was unacceptable for Russia.
• German authorities detained at least five people suspected of operating a network that exported goods to Russian defence companies, contravening EU sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, federal prosecutors announced.

Sport

• FIFA President Gianni Infantino said he supports the reinstatement of Russia in the football federation and called for an end to the country’s four-year exclusion from international tournaments, including the World Cup in Qatar and the qualifying matches for the 2026 World Cup.
• Sport federations that claim sport is separate from politics should not include armed conflicts in that definition, because “war is a crime, not politics”, Ukrainian Minister of Sports Matvii Bidnyi said in an interview with the AFP news agency in advance of the Winter Olympics.

Energy

• Indian oil refiners will need a wind-down period to complete Russian oil deals before imports from that country can be halted, Reuters reported after Trump announced a trade agreement with India that included a halt to oil purchases from Russia.

• Ukraine’s electricity imports jumped by 40 percent in January 2026 compared with December 2025, hitting a record 894 gigawatt hours amid constant Russian attacks on the Ukrainian energy system, which have left millions of people without power and heating, Reuters reported, citing analysts.

• The EU’s decision last week to ban Russian gas imports was “100 percent legally sound”, the bloc’s energy commissioner, Dan Jorgensen, told reporters in Portugal’s capital, Lisbon, adding it would prevent Russia from weaponising energy amid its war on Ukraine.

These are the key developments from day 1,439 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Monday, February 1:

Fighting

• A Russian drone strike on a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least 12 people, according to officials.
• Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal denounced the strike as a “cynical and targeted” attack on energy workers. Their employer, DTEK, said the victims were finishing a shift.
• Another Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed a man and a woman, while nine people were wounded in Russian attacks on a maternity ward and a residential neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhia, officials said. Among those injured were two women undergoing medical examination.
• In a post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of attempting to disrupt logistics and connectivity between Ukrainian cities and communities through its drone, bomb and missile attacks. He said Russia used more than 980 attack drones, nearly 1,100 guided aerial bombs, and two missiles against Ukraine.
• Nearly 700 apartment buildings remain without heating in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, due to previous Russian attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said, as a new wave of bitter cold swept across much of the country.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces gained control over the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and the settlement of Sukhetske in the Donetsk region, according to the TASS news agency. The ministry added that Russian forces hit facilities of transport infrastructure used in the interests of the Ukrainian army.
• Tech billionaire Elon Musk said moves by his SpaceX company to stop Russia’s “unauthorised” use of its internet system Starlink seem to have worked, after Ukrainian officials reported finding Starlink terminals on long-range drones used in Russian attacks.
• Ukrainian Minister of Defence Mykhailo Fedorov said Kyiv was developing a system that would allow only authorised Starlink terminals to work on Ukrainian territory.

Politics and diplomacy

• Zelenskyy said a new round of trilateral talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials on a Washington-drafted plan to end the nearly four-year war has been postponed to February 4 and 5 in the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.
• Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, praised US President Donald Trump’s “brash” style as “effective” in seeking peace, but added that Moscow had seen no trace of nuclear submarines that Trump claimed he had moved to Russian shores.
• Medvedev added in his interview with the Reuters and TASS news agencies that Trump “wants to go down in history as a peacemaker – and he is really trying”, which explains “why contacts with Americans have become much more productive”.
• Medvedev also said that European powers had failed to defeat Russia in Ukraine, but had inflicted severe economic harm on themselves by trying to do so.
• Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu held talks with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi in Beijing, with China’s top diplomat saying that bilateral relations between the two countries could “break new ground” this year.
• Wang also told Shoigu that China and Russia must work together to uphold multilateralism in a time of “turmoil”, and “advocate for an equal and orderly multipolar world”.
• The US and Russia’s New START pact, the final treaty in the world that restricted nuclear weapon deployment, is set to expire on Thursday, and with it, restrictions on the two top nuclear powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested in September a one-year extension of New START, but little has been heard from Trump since he indicated last year that an extension “sounds like a good idea”.

These are the key developments from day 1,438 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Sunday, February 1:

Fighting

• Russian attacks on Ukraine killed one person and wounded seven others in the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to the country’s emergency service. High-rise buildings, homes, shops and cafes were also damaged.
• Another person was wounded by shelling in the Zaporizhia region, the service said, with a blast also destroying three residential buildings and 12 homes.
• In the Donetsk region, at least two people were killed, and five more were wounded, in 13 separate Russian attacks across multiple districts, according to Governor Vadym Filashkin.
• A total of 172 people, including 35 children, were evacuated from the front line, Filashkin said.
• Russian strikes hit state railway infrastructure in the Zaporizhia and Dnipro regions, a tactic Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said was intended to “cut our cities off from one another”.
• In total, 303 combat clashes took place throughout Saturday, Ukraine’s General Staff wrote on Telegram, tallying 38 air strikes, 119 guided bombs, 2,510 kamikaze drones and 2,437 attacks on settlements and troops.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence said on Saturday that its troops captured ⁠the villages ​of Petrivka, ‍in Ukraine’s southeastern ‍Zaporizhzhia region, and ⁠Toretske, in the eastern ​Donetsk ‌region. Al Jazeera could not verify the claim.
• Russia’s TASS state news agency also claimed that Russian forces had taken control of at least 24 Ukrainian settlements since the start of the year, the majority of which were in the Zaporizhia region.
• Two people were wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on a car in Russia’s Belgorod region, TASS reported.

Energy

• Parts of Ukraine, including at least 3,500 buildings in Kyiv, faced a blackout throughout Saturday after a failure on interconnection lines with Moldova, officials reported.
• The Kyiv metro closed down, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of people, along with the capital’s water and electricity supplies, Mayor Vitali Klitschko wrote on Telegram.
• Although the capital’s water supplies had returned by around 10:30pm local time (20:30 GMT), energy workers were continuing to restore heat to roughly 2,600 houses, Klitschko said.
• Ukraine is investigating the stoppage, but “as of now, there is no confirmation of external interference or a cyberattack”, the president said. “Most indications point to weather: ice buildup on the lines and automatic shutdowns.”
• At the request of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence, SpaceX has temporarily restricted operations of its Starlink systems in Ukraine to prevent Russian drone attacks, Serhii Beskrestnov, technology adviser to the defence minister, announced on Facebook.
• “I apologise once again to those who have been temporarily affected by the measures taken, but for the security of the country, these are now very important and necessary actions,” Beskrestnov wrote.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States special envoy Steve Witkoff said that he had “productive and constructive meetings” with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida.
• “We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine,” Witkoff said, adding that he was “grateful” for US President Donald Trump’s “critical leadership in seeking a durable and lasting peace”.
• US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks.
• In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukraine is “in regular contact with the US side” and is “waiting for them to provide specifics on further meetings”, expected to take place next week.
• “Ukraine is ready to work in all effective formats,” he added. “What matters is the results, and that meetings happen.”
• Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha spoke with Deputy Prime Minister of Liechtenstein Sabine Monauni, discussing “developments in the peace negotiations and urgent needs of Ukraine’s energy system”, Sybiha wrote on X.
• “We also paid special attention to further sanctions pressure on Russia and joint international efforts to hold it to account,” Sybiha said.

These are the key developments from day 1,435 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Thursday, January 29:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday rose to six, after the remains of several bodies were recovered from the wreckage, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office said on the Telegram messaging app.
• At least six people were injured in a Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on Telegram.
• Russian forces attacked several locations across Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring at least two other people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, said on Facebook.
• One person was killed in a Ukrainian attack on the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia’s Belgorod region, the regional emergencies task force reported, according to the country’s TASS state news agency.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the city of Enerhodar, in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region, Russia’s locally appointed official Yevhen Balitsky said, according to TASS.
• Fedorov has ruled out installing anti-drone netting as a mode of defence, saying that “there are more effective ways to combat Russian attacks”, Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency reported.

Military aid

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that France will deliver more “French aircraft, missiles for air defence systems, and aerial bombs” to Ukraine this year, following a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.

Regional security

• Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an event in Paris that a 2035 target for rearming Europe “would be too late”.
• “I think rearming ourselves now is the most important thing,” Frederiksen said. “Because when you look at intelligence, nuclear weapons, and so on, we depend on the US,” she added.

• Switzerland plans to inject an additional 31 billion Swiss francs ($40.4bn) into military spending starting from 2028 by increasing sales taxes for a decade.
• “The world has become more volatile and insecure, and the international order based on international law is under strain,” the Swiss government said, noting that other European countries have also been increasing their defence spending.

Politics and diplomacy

• Vladislav Maslennikov, a top European Affairs official at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told TASS that restoring relations with the European Union will only be possible if European countries “cease their sanctions policy”, stop “pump[ing] weapons into the Kyiv regime, and sabotag[ing] the peace process around Ukraine.”

• President Macron said at an event in Paris that European countries must focus on asserting their “sovereignty, on our contribution to Arctic security, on the fight against foreign interference and disinformation, and on the fight against global warming”.
• “France will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the United Nations Charter,” said Macron, who has turned down an invitation for France to join Trump’s Board of Peace, which some critics say is an attempt to replace the United Nations.

Peace talks

• United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing that negotiations over Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which is part of the Donbas region that is now 90 percent occupied by Russian forces, are “still a bridge we have to cross” in talks between Russia and Ukraine.
• “It’s still a gap, but at least we’ve been able to narrow down the issue set to one central one, and it will probably be a very difficult one,” Rubio said.

Energy

• Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that 639 apartment buildings in Kyiv remain without heat, with temperatures forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.

These are the key developments from day 1,433 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, January 27:

Fighting

• At least two people were injured after Russian forces launched a drone and missile attack on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. The attack also damaged apartment buildings, a school, and a kindergarten, he added.

• Russian drones also hit a high-rise apartment building in Ukraine’s Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s hometown southeast of Kharkiv. The head of the city’s military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said the attack triggered a fire, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
• A Russian drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital damaged parts of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Ukraine’s most famous religious landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture said in a statement.
• In Russia, one person was killed following a Ukrainian drone attack in the border region of Belgorod, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Ukraine’s military said it struck the Slavyansk Eko oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region overnight. The military said in a statement that parts of the primary oil processing facility were hit. There were no initial reports of casualties.

• One person was injured, and two business enterprises caught fire in the city of Slavyansk-on-Kuban – also in Russia’s Krasnodar – after fragments fell from a destroyed drone, the regional emergencies centre said.

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that air defence systems had intercepted and destroyed 40 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 34 in the Krasnodar region.

Military aid

• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Ukraine’s interception rate of Russian missiles and drones has decreased due to Kyiv having fewer weapons to protect it from incoming attacks. Rutte urged allies to dig into their stockpiles to help defend Ukraine.

Humanitarian aid

• Czechs have collected more than $6m in just five days in a grassroots fundraising effort to buy generators, heaters and batteries to send to Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of people are freezing in sub-zero temperatures after Russian attacks on power plants, the online fundraising initiative Darek pro Putina (“Gift for Putin”) said.

Ceasefire talks

• Talks between Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are expected to resume on February 1, Zelenskyy said in his regular evening address. He urged Ukraine’s allies not to weaken their pressure on Moscow in advance of the expected talks.

• In a separate post on X, Zelenskyy said military issues were the primary topic of discussion at trilateral talks with the US and Russia over the weekend in Abu Dhabi, but that political issues were also discussed. He added that preparations are under way for new trilateral meetings.

• The US-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were held in a “constructive spirit”, but there was still “significant work ahead”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists in Moscow. The talks should be viewed positively despite these differences, he added.

• The Kremlin also said that the issue of territory remained fundamental to Russia when it came to getting a deal to end the fighting, the Russian state’s TASS news agency reported. Moscow has insisted that for the war to end, Russia must take over all of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.

• German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul denounced Russia’s “stubborn insistence on the crucial territorial issue” following the talks in Abu Dhabi.

Politics

• European Union countries have approved a ban on Russian gas imports by late 2027, a move to cut ties with their former top energy supplier nearly four years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
• Ukrainian Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal welcomed the ban, saying in a statement that independence from Russian energy “is, above all, about a safe and strong Europe”.
• Germany’s Wadephul said that Russia is testing European countries’ resilience with hybrid tactics, such as the damaging of undersea cables, the jamming of GPS signals and the deployment of a shadow fleet of vessels to break sanctions, as its deadly war in Ukraine continues.

• Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Budapest would summon Ukraine’s ambassador over what Orban said were attempts by Kyiv to interfere in a Hungarian parliamentary election due on April 12. In recent weeks, Orban has intensified his anti-Ukrainian rhetoric and sought to link opposition leader, Peter Magyar, with Brussels and Ukraine.