Russia

These are the key developments from day 1,445 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Sunday, February 8:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched more than 400 drones and about 40 missiles in an overnight attack on Ukraine on Saturday, targeting the country’s power grid, generation facilities and distribution substations, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Ukrainian Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal said two thermal power stations in Ukraine’s western regions were hit, and electricity distribution lines were also targeted.
• Zelenskyy said more than 1,000 apartment buildings remain without heating in bitterly cold temperatures in the capital, Kyiv, due to the attacks.
• The Ukrainian president criticised Moscow’s targeting of energy infrastructure, saying Russia must be deprived of the ability to use the cold winter weather as leverage against Kyiv. “Every day, Russia could choose real diplomacy, but it chooses new strikes,” he said.
• Poland suspended operations at the Lublin and Rzeszow airports near the border with Ukraine on Saturday following the Russian strikes. Polish authorities later said there had been no violation of the country’s airspace and reopened the two airports.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency said on X that Ukrainian nuclear power plants have reduced output due to the renewed military activity that affected electrical substations and disconnected some power lines.

• Ukrainian military and security officials said that Kyiv struck an oil depot in Russia’s Saratov region and a plant that makes missile fuel components in the Tver region in western Russia.
• Ukrainian forces also launched a strike on Russia’s Bryansk region, according to the governor there, using long-range Neptune missiles and HIMARS rocket systems. The attacks wounded two people and disrupted power in seven municipalities, the official said.
• The Russian TASS news agency said another Ukrainian missile attack on the border region of Belgorod caused power outages at several water supply facilities, and that experts are “investigating the extent of the outage”.
• The Russian Defence Ministry said its troops captured the village of Chuhunivka in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region, the state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

Peace talks

• Zelenskyy said the United States has given Moscow and Kyiv a deadline of June to reach an agreement on ending the war, after the two countries held two days of talks in Abu Dhabi this week.
• Zelenskyy said Washington has proposed talks in Miami in a week, and that Kyiv has agreed.
• The US also asked Russia and Ukraine to agree to a new ceasefire covering strikes on energy infrastructure as a de-escalation step during the talks, Zelenskyy said. He added that Kyiv was ready to stop attacks on Russian oil facilities and other energy infrastructure, but Moscow has yet to agree.
• The Ukrainian leader said he had reports from Ukrainian intelligence services on discussions in which Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev had proposed US-Russian cooperation deals worth as much as $12 trillion. Any such agreements between Moscow and Washington must not violate Ukraine’s constitution, Zelenskyy said.
• Zelenskyy added that Ukraine and Russia remain far apart in the discussions about territory. He said the US was proposing a free economic zone in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which Russia mostly occupies, but that neither Ukraine nor Russia was thrilled by this idea.

• Earlier, the Ukrainian leader met his negotiating team in Kyiv and said Ukraine “needs results” that ensure “effective security guarantees” for the country.

• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow that a third round of talks aimed at ending Russia’s war on Ukraine should take place “soon”. But he said there is no fixed date yet.

Politics and security

• Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdrii Sybiha said Kyiv supports a call for a ceasefire during the Winter Olympic Games after Italy and Pope Leo urged world leaders to use the Milano Cortina games to further peace.
• The Russian newspaper Kommersant reported that two suspects in the attempted assassination of top Russian military intelligence official General Vladimir Alexeyev “will soon be interrogated”. It cited a source close to the investigation.
• Alexeyev, the deputy head of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence arm, was shot in his Moscow apartment building and rushed to hospital on Friday. He underwent successful surgery and regained consciousness on Saturday, but remained under medical supervision, Kommersant added.
• Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov accused Ukraine of being behind the assassination attempt, which he said – without providing evidence – was designed to sabotage peace talks.
• US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order rescinding a punitive 25 percent duty on all imports from India over its purchases of Russian oil, the White House said. The two nations earlier announced a trade deal slashing US tariffs on Indian goods to 18 percent from 50 percent in exchange for India halting Russian oil purchases and lowering trade barriers.

Ukraine braced for more attacks on its energy infrastructure this week as winter temperatures continued to fall to -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit), and sought to adapt its defences against Russian drones.

On Thursday, Ukraine’s energy minister, Denys Shmyal, warned Ukrainians to prepare for more power blackouts in the coming days as Russian air attacks continued.

Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said Russia had struck energy infrastructure 217 times this year. Shmyal said 200 emergency crews were working to restore power to 1,100 buildings in Kyiv alone.

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power stations, gas pipelines and power cables since mid-January, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without heat or electricity at various points.

On January 29, US President Donald Trump told a cabinet meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week, something the Kremlin confirmed.

“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,” Trump said.

It was unclear when that conversation happened, exactly, but on Tuesday this week, Russia unleashed one of its biggest strikes ever on energy infrastructure in Kyiv and Kharkiv, deploying 71 missiles and 450 drones.

Ukraine’s Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat said Ukraine had only managed to shoot down 38 of the missiles because a very high proportion of them were ballistic.

Russia’s defence ministry claimed it was targeting storage sites for unmanned aerial vehicles, defence enterprises and their energy supply.

The strike coincided with a visit to Kyiv by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and came a day before tripartite talks among Russia, Ukraine and the US resumed in Abu Dhabi.

“Last night, in our view, the Russians broke their promise,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his news conference with Rutte. “So, either Russia now thinks that a week is less than four days instead of seven, or they are genuinely betting only on war.”

The strike also came just as Kyiv had managed to reduce the number of apartment buildings without heat from 3,500 three days earlier, to about 500.

At least two people, both aged 18, were killed as they walked on a street in Zaporizhzhia, southeast Ukraine.

Even on relatively quiet days, Russia causes civilian deaths. On Sunday, February 1, Russia killed a dozen miners when a drone struck the bus that was taking them to work in Ukraine’s central Dnipro region.

Evolving drone tactics

During the few days in which it did observe the moratorium on energy-related strikes, Russia focused on striking Ukrainian logistics instead and made attempts to extend the reach of its drones.

Ukrainian Defence Ministry Adviser on Technology and Drone Warfare Serhiy “Flash” Beskrestnov reported that Russian drones were striking Ukrainian trucks 50km (31 miles) from the front line. He also said Russia had adapted its Geran drone to act “as a carrier” for smaller, first-person view (FPV) drones, doubling up two relatively cheap systems for greater range.

Ukrainian broadcaster Suspilne said Russia had begun these new tactics in mid-January.

Ukraine’s Air Force has managed to down about 90 percent of Russia’s long-range drones, and a high proportion of its missiles – almost 22,000 targets in January alone.

Zelenskyy recently demanded better results, however, and one of the Ukrainian responses to Russian tactics has been a new, short-range “small air defence” force that uses drones to counter drones.

“Hundreds of UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] crews have already been transferred to the operational control of the Air Force grouping – they are performing tasks in the first and second echelons of interception,” wrote Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii on Wednesday this week.

Ukraine’s second response has been to disable Russian Starlink terminals, which Russia uses extensively on the battlefield, and has recently begun mounting on UAVs.

Starlink uses low-orbit satellites and is impervious to jamming, allowing Russia to change a drone’s intended target while it is in mid-flight.

Ukraine’s newly installed defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has been creating a “white list” of Starlink terminals used by the armed forces of Ukraine, and sent them to Starlink owner Elon Musk, asking him to keep these operational while shutting down all others in the Ukraine theatre.

“Soon, only verified and registered terminals will operate in Ukraine. Everything else will be disconnected,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.

“Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done,” Musk wrote on Twitter on Sunday.

Fedorov and Beskrestnov have been asking Ukrainian soldiers and civilians to register any Starlink terminals they acquire privately on the white list.

More sanctions on the way

On the day of Russia’s large strike, Zelenskyy appealed to the US to pass a bill long in the making that would impose more sanctions on buyers of Russian oil. China is the biggest, followed by India.

The previous day, Trump said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian oil. “He agreed to stop buying Russian Oil, and to buy much more from the United States and, potentially, Venezuela. This will help END THE WAR in Ukraine,” he wrote on his social media platform.

A Russian government source told Reuters that an assumed 30 percent drop in oil sales to India, and lower sales to other customers, could triple Moscow’s planned budget deficit this year from 1.6 percent of GDP to 3.5 percent or 4.4 percent. Government data released on Wednesday showed the Kremlin’s revenues from energy at $5.13bn in January, half the level of January 2025.

Zelenskyy also discussed a 20th sanctions package under preparation with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. “We can already see what is happening to the Russian economy and what could follow if the pressure is applied effectively,” he said.

Russia has made little headway in its ground war in the past three years, a fact repeatedly documented, most recently by a CSIS report. Despite this, its top officials continued to insist last week on terms of peace that would force Ukraine to give up control of four of its southeastern regions, cut down its armed forces and agree not to join NATO – terms Ukraine refuses.

The resumed talks in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday yielded only a prisoner-of-war exchange of 157 a side.

Kremlin spokesperson says Russian forces would continue fighting until Kyiv makes necessary ‘decisions’ to end the war.

The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield as a result of the country’s war with Russia is estimated to be 55,000, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that a “large number” were also missing.

President Zelenskyy’s remarks on Wednesday came in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid crucial ceasefire talks in Abu Dhabi, where negotiators are trying to end Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.

“In Ukraine, officially the number of soldiers killed on the battlefield – either professionals or those conscripted – is 55,000,” said Zelenskyy, in a prerecorded interview with France 2 TV.

Zelenskyy, whose comments were translated into French, added that on top of that casualty figure was a “large number of people” considered officially missing.

The Ukrainian leader did not give an exact figure for those who are still missing.

Zelenskyy had previously cited a figure for Ukrainian war dead in an interview with the United States television network NBC in February 2025, saying that more than 46,000 Ukrainian service members had been killed on the battlefield.

In the middle of 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, estimated that close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since the war began.

Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that Russian attacks had killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025, almost a third higher than the number of casualties in 2024.

Russia has also incurred heavy losses in the ongoing war.

In January, Ukraine’s military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, was quoted as saying that in 2025 alone, almost 420,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded while fighting against Ukrainian forces.

An October 2025 estimate by British defence intelligence put the overall number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the war at 1.1 million.

Both Ukraine and Russia rarely disclose their own casualty figures in the war, though they actively report enemy losses on the battlefield.

Analysts say both Kyiv and Moscow are likely underreporting their own deaths while inflating those of the other side.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia would keep fighting until Kyiv made the “decisions” that could bring the war to an end, while in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian and Russian officials wrapped up a “productive” first day of new US-brokered talks, Kyiv’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the fighting, although the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks.

The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which now sits in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

Moscow has demanded that Kyiv pull its troops out of all the Donbas region, including heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences against Russian aggression, as a condition for any deal to end the fighting.

Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces from territory it still controls.

Russian forces occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Zelenskyy expects talks to soon lead to another prisoner exchange.

Ukrainian and Russian officials have wrapped up their first day of United States-mediated peace talks and are set to reconvene Thursday, according to Kyiv’s chief negotiator.

Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, described Wednesday’s negotiations in Abu Dhabi as “substantive and productive”. Talks are due to continue into a second day, his spokesperson Diana Davityan said, though no major advance towards ending the nearly four-year war was announced.

The positive outlook came despite fears the talks would be marred by a new wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities said the latest strikes included one that killed seven people at a crowded market, while others further damaged Kyiv’s power infrastructure amid freezing temperatures.

Nevertheless, the talks “focused on concrete steps and practical solutions”, said Umerov.

Negotiations must ‘genuinely move towards peace’

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an evening address, said it was imperative the talks yield concrete results and that he anticipated a prisoner exchange “in the near future”.

“People in Ukraine must feel that the situation is genuinely moving toward peace and the end of the war, not toward Russia using everything to its advantage and continuing attacks,” Zelenskyy said.

The Kremlin said that the “doors for a peaceful settlement are open,” but that Moscow will continue its military assault until Kyiv agrees to its demands.

The central hurdle in ending the war is the status of embattled eastern Ukraine, where Russia continues to make slow, painstaking advances.

Moscow is demanding that Kyiv withdraw its forces from large parts of the Donbas, including heavily fortified cities atop vast natural resources, as a precondition to any deal.

It also wants the world to recognise Russian sovereignty over territory it has seized in the war.

Kyiv is instead pushing for the front lines to be frozen at their current positions and rejects any unilateral troop withdrawal. Polls show that the majority of Ukrainians oppose a deal that hands Moscow more land.

“I think that Ukraine doesn’t have any moral right to give up our occupied territories … because my friends were fighting for that and they died for that,” Sofiia, a resident of Ukraine’s Poltava region, told Al Jazeera.

Unresolved issues ‘diminishing’

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said it would likely take time to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough but claimed the administration of President Donald Trump had helped “substantially diminish” the number of unresolved issues between the warring parties.

“That’s the good news,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday. “The bad news is that the items that remain are the most difficult ones. And meanwhile the war continues.”

Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi said Kyiv was “interested in finding out what the Russians and Americans really want”.

He added that the talks – only the second direct engagement between Ukrainian and Russian officials in more than three years – focused on “military and military-political issues”.

Russia occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and ⁠parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

Zelenskyy on Wednesday said that the number of Ukrainian troops killed since the start of the war stood at about 55,000, with a “great number” also missing in action.

Total wartime casualties, including both killed and wounded, are estimated to extend into the hundreds of thousands for both sides.

New Delhi, India – When US President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with India on Monday this week, he declared that New Delhi would pivot away from Russian energy as part of the agreement.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump said, had promised to stop buying Russian oil, and instead buy crude from the United States and from Venezuela, whose president, Nicolas Maduro, was abducted by US special forces in early January. Since then, the US has effectively taken control of Venezuela’s mammoth oil industry.

In return, Trump dialled down trade tariffs on Indian goods from an overall 50 percent to just 18 percent. Half of that 50 percent tariff was levied last year as punishment for India buying Russian oil, which the White House maintains is financing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.

But since Monday, India has not publicly confirmed that it has committed to either ceasing its purchase of Russian oil or embracing Venezuelan crude, analysts note. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters on Tuesday that Russia had received no indication of this from India, either.

And switching from Russian to Venezuelan oil will be far from straightforward. A cocktail of other factors – shocks to the energy market, costs, geography, and the characteristics of different kinds of oil – will complicate New Delhi’s decisions about its sourcing of oil, they say.

So, can India really dump Russian oil? And can Venezuelan crude replace it?

What is Trump’s plan?

Trump has been pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil for months. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the US and European Union placed an oil price cap on Russian crude in a bid to limit Russia’s ability to finance the war.

As a result, other countries including India began buying large quantities of cheap Russian oil. India, which before the war sourced only 2.5 percent of its oil from Russia, became the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China. It currently sources around 30 percent of its oil from Russia.

Last year, Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods from 25 percent to 50 percent as punishment for this. Later in the year, Trump also imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies – and threatened secondary sanctions against countries and entities that trade with these firms.

Since the abduction of Maduro by US forces in early January, Trump has effectively taken over the Venezuelan oil sector, controlling sales cash flows.

Venezuela also has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at 303 billion barrels, more than five times larger than those of the US, the world’s largest oil producer.

But while getting India to buy Venezuelan oil makes sense from the US’s perspective, analysts say this could be operationally messy.

How much oil does India import from Russia?

India currently imports nearly 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, according to analytics company Kpler. Under Trump’s mounting pressure, that is lower than the average 1.21 million bpd in December 2025 and more than 2 million bpd in mid-2025.

One barrel is equivalent to 159 litres (42 gallons) of crude oil. Once refined, a barrel typically produces about 73 litres (19 gallons) of petrol for a car. Oil is also refined to produce a wide variety of products, from jet fuel to household items including plastics and even lotions.

Has India stopped Russian oil purchases?

India has reduced the amount of oil it buys from Russia over the past year, but it has not stopped buying it altogether.

Under increasing pressure from Trump, last August, Indian officials called out the “hypocrisy” of the US and EU pressuring New Delhi to back off from Russian crude.

“In fact, India began importing from Russia because traditional supplies were diverted to Europe after the outbreak of the conflict,” Randhir Jaiswal, India’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said then. He added that India’s decision to import Russian oil was “meant to ensure predictable and affordable energy costs to the Indian consumer”.

Despite this, Indian refiners, currently the second-largest group of buyers of Russian oil after China, are reportedly winding up their purchases after clearing current scheduled orders.

Major refiners like Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL), and HPCL-Mittal Energy Ltd (HMEL) halted purchasing from Russia following the US sanctions against Russian oil producers last year.

Other players like Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), Bharat Petroleum Corporation, and Reliance Industries will soon stop their purchases.

What happens if India suddenly stops buying Russian oil?

Even if India wanted to stop importing Russian oil altogether, analysts argue it would be extremely costly to do so.

In September last year, India’s oil and petroleum minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, told reporters that it would also sharply push up energy prices and fuel inflation. “The world will face serious consequences if the supplies are disrupted. The world can’t afford to keep Russia off the oil market,” Puri said.

Analysts tend to agree. “A complete cessation of Indian purchases of Russian oil would be a major disruption. An immediate halt would spike global prices and threaten India’s economic growth,” said George Voloshin, an independent energy analyst based in Paris.

Russian oil would likely be diverted more heavily towards China and into “shadow” fleets of tankers that deliver sanctioned oil secretly by flying false flags and switching off location equipment, Voloshin told Al Jazeera. “Mainstream tanker demand would shift toward the Atlantic Basin, most likely increasing global freight rates as a result,” he noted.

Sumit Pokharna, vice president at Kotak Securities, noted that Indian refineries have reported robust margins in the last two years, majorly benefitting from the discounted Russian crude.

“If they move to higher-costing, like the US or Venezuela, then raw material cost would increase, and that would squeeze their margins,” he told Al Jazeera. “If it goes beyond control, they may have to pass the excess onto consumers.”

Can India stop buying Russian oil altogether?

It may not be able to. One of India’s two private refiners, Nayara Energy, is majority-Russian-owned and under heavy Western sanctions. The Russian energy firm Rosneft holds a 49.13 percent stake in the company, which operates a 400,000-barrel-per-day refinery in India’s Gujarat, PM Modi’s home state.

Nayara is the second-largest importer of Russian crude, buying about 471,000 barrels per day in January this year, accounting for nearly 40 percent of Russian supplies to India.

Its plant has relied solely on Russian crude since European Union sanctions were imposed on the company last July.

Nayara is not planning to load Russian oil in April as it shuts its refinery for more than a month for maintenance from April 10, according to Reuters.

Pokharna said the future of Nayara hangs in the balance, with the US unlikely to grant India an overt exemption for the Russia-backed company to import crude.

Can India switch to Venezuelan oil?

India has been a major consumer of Venezuelan oil in the past. At its peak, in 2019, India imported $7.2bn of oil, accounting for just under 7 percent of total imports. That stopped after the US slapped sanctions on Venezuelan oil, but some officials of the government-owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation are still stationed in the Latin American country.

Now, major Indian refiners have said they are open to receiving Venezuelan oil again, but only if it is a viable option.

For one thing, Venezuela is roughly twice as far from India as Russia and five times further than the Middle East, meaning much higher freight costs.

Venezuelan oil is more expensive as well. “Russian Urals [a medium-heavy crude blend] has been trading at a wide-ranging discount of about $10-20 per barrel to Brent, while Venezuelan Merey currently offers a smaller discount of around $5-8 per barrel,” Voloshin told Al Jazeera.

“Importing from Venezuela and forgoing the Russian discount would be a costly affair for India,” said Pokharna. “From transportation cost to forgoing discounts, it could cost India $6-8 more per barrel – and that is a huge increase in the importing bill.”

Overall, a complete pivot away from Russia could raise India’s import bill by $9bn to $11bn – an amount roughly equal to India’s federal health budget – per year, according to Kpler.

“Venezuelan crude must be discounted by at least $10 to $12 per barrel to be competitive,” argued Voloshin. “This deeper discount is necessary to offset the much higher freight costs, increased insurance premiums for the longer Atlantic voyage, and the somewhat higher operational expenses required to process Venezuela’s extra-heavy high-sulfur crude.”

Without deeper discounts, the longer journey and complex handling make Venezuelan oil more expensive on a delivered basis, he added.

Another major issue is that many Indian refiners simply do not have the facilities to process very heavy Venezuelan oil.

Venezuelan crude is a heavy, sour oil, thick and viscous like molasses, with a high sulphur content requiring complex, specialised refineries to process it into fuel. Only a small number of Indian refineries are equipped to handle it.

“[Venezuelan oil’s heaviness] makes it an option only for complex refineries, leaving out older and smaller refineries,” Pokharna told Al Jazeera. “The shift is operationally difficult and would require blending with more expensive light crudes.”

Then there is the question of availability. Today, Venezuela produces barely a million barrels per day when pushed to its limit. Even if all production was sent to India, it would not match the total Russian oil import.

Where else could India buy oil?

India’s Minister Puri has said that New Delhi is looking to diversify sourcing options from nearly 40 countries.

As India has reduced Russian imports, it has increased them from Middle Eastern nations and other countries in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Now, while Russia accounts for nearly 27 percent share in India’s oil imports, OPEC nations, led by Iraq and Saudi Arabia, contribute 53 percent.

Reeling from Trump’s trade war, India has also increased purchases of US oil. American crude imports to India rose by 92 percent from April to November in 2025 to nearly 13 million tons, compared to 7.1 million in the same period in 2024.

However, India would be competing for these supplies with the European Union, which has pledged to spend $750bn by 2028 on US energy and nuclear products.

Meanwhile, for Venezuela to return to higher production, Caracas needs political stability, changes in foreign investment and oil laws, and to clear debts. That will take time, experts say.

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.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has ordered Ukraine’s military leaders to respond after a spate of Russian attacks targeting railway infrastructure and logistics routes.

His comments on Monday come after Russian forces stepped up attacks, including on a train last week that killed five people in a railway car in the eastern region of Kharkiv.

Ukraine has managed to keep its nationwide rail network running despite almost four years of war. Russian forces have prioritised the capture of train hubs, such as Kupiansk and Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.

“The Russian army remains focused on terror against our logistics – primarily railway infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. “In particular there were strikes in the Dnipro region and in Zaporizhzhia, specifically targeting railway facilities.”

State railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia warned that several of its routes in eastern Ukraine are becoming increasingly “high risk” and urged passengers to instead take buses.

In the eastern region of Sumy, Ukrzaliznytsia said it will monitor Russian drone threats and stop trains near bomb shelters if they emerge.

‘Very complex’ negotiations

Russian drones and missiles have continued to bombard civilian areas, killing 12 miners in a bus on Sunday in the most recent mass aerial attack. The barrages are also wrecking the Ukrainian power grid, leaving people without heating, light and running water in bitter winter cold.

The attacks come as a new round of US-brokered talks on ending the war are set to go ahead this week after a brief postponement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said discussions will take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where a meeting was held last month.

On Sunday, Zelenskyy said he will send a delegation.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year has pushed the two sides to find compromises to end the war. But breaking the deadlock on key issues appears no closer as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbour approaches this month.

Peskov described the negotiations as “very complex”.

“On some issues, we have certainly come closer because there have been discussions, conversations and on some issues it is easier to find common ground,” he told reporters. “There are issues where it’s more difficult to find common ground.”

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev was in Miami, Florida, at the weekend for talks with American officials, but Peskov refused to provide any details of the meeting.

A key sticking point is whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian territory its army has occupied, especially in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. Moscow is also demanding possession of other Ukrainian land there that it hasn’t been able to capture on the battlefield.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding ground, saying such a move would only embolden Moscow, and it has refused to sign any deal that might fail to deter Russia from invading again.

After failing in its aim of a lightning offensive to capture Kyiv and topple Ukraine’s leadership in a matter of days in 2022, Russia has been bogged down in the face of Ukrainian defences and is now mounting a grinding advance that has come at a huge human cost.

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”.

Russian drone strike kills 12 mine workers in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, injuring seven others.

At least 12 people have been killed in a Russian drone attack on a bus carrying miners in ​Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region, the country’s energy minister said.

“Today, the enemy carried out a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers in the Dnipro region,” Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal posted on Telegram on Sunday.

“As a result of the terrorist attack, 12 mine workers were killed and seven more were injured.”

Police said the attack took place in the ‌city of Ternivka. Footage posted by the State Emergencies Service showed a charred bus with ‌shattered windows that had veered off ⁠the road.

Energy firm DTEK said in a statement that the killed and wounded were its employees returning from a shift.

Earlier on Sunday, regional officials said at least nine people had been wounded in Russian strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential building in the ‌southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

The attacks come days after United States President Donald Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to temporarily halt the targeting of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv and other cities, amid freezing temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to Ukrainians.

The Kremlin confirmed on Friday that it agreed to suspend attacks on Kyiv until Sunday, but did not reveal any further details.

Russia and Ukraine held trilateral talks with the US in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, last month and are expected to meet for a second round this month, amid ongoing US pressure to end their nearly four-year war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that the second round of talks ‍would take ⁠place in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday.

While Ukrainian and Russian officials have agreed in principle with Washington’s demands for a compromise, Moscow and Kyiv differ deeply over what an agreement should look like.

A central issue is whether Russia should keep or withdraw from areas of Ukraine its forces have occupied, especially Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called the Donbas, and whether it should get land there that it has not yet captured.

Second round of talks to follow negotiations last month that appeared to make little progress on key issue of territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says a second round of trilateral talks on ending the war with Russia will take place in Abu Dhabi this week as the fate of a temporary energy ceasefire hangs in the balance.

Zelenskyy, whose country’s energy system has come under relentless attack in one of the coldest winters in years, said envoys from the United States, Russia and Ukraine would meet in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” he said on Sunday amid continuing US pressure to reach a deal with Russia after almost four years of war.

The first round of trilateral negotiations took place in late January but appeared to make little progress on the vital question of territory. Moscow still is demanding Kyiv cede a fifth of the Donetsk region that it still controls, which Zelenskyy’s government is refusing to do. The next round had been scheduled to take place on Sunday but may have been delayed because of the US-Iran crisis.

US President Donald Trump, who has said he wants to be remembered as a “peacemaker”, has repeatedly said a deal to end the Ukraine war is close and on Thursday announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop strikes on energy targets for a week due to cold weather.

The terms of his agreement with Putin were not clear, but the Kremlin said on Friday that it had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday. Ukraine appeared to believe the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday.

Medvedev says Russian victory near

Meanwhile, US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that he held constructive talks with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks. Witkoff said afterwards that he was “encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine”.

On Sunday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev praised Trump as a “peacemaker”, telling the Reuters news agency that Russia would “soon” achieve a military victory in the Ukraine war.

“But it is equally important to think about what will happen next. After all, the goal of victory is to prevent new conflicts. This is absolutely obvious,” said the hawkish former president, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia have reported major strikes on their energy infrastructure in recent days although Zelenskyy said Russia was trying “to destroy logistics and connectivity between cities and communities” through air attacks.

In southeastern Ukraine, two people were killed overnight in a drone strike on a residential building in the city of Dnipro, and six people were wounded in an attack on a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, regional officials said.

The talks come just a day before a second round of US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi.

United States special envoy Steve Witkoff has said he held “productive and constructive meetings” with Russian special envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida, as President Donald Trump’s administration presses to end Russia’s nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

“We are encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine,” wrote Witkoff in a post on X following Saturday’s talks.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and White House adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks.

Neither side released details of what was discussed.

Dmitriev also met Witkoff and Kushner in January on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

He also held talks on the Ukraine war with US negotiators in a visit to Miami in December.

Saturday’s meeting comes before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are expected to hold a second round of talks with US mediators in Abu Dhabi to discuss a US-backed plan to end Russia’s war.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy later appeared to suggest that the meeting would not take place on Sunday, saying in his nightly address that Ukraine was waiting for more information from the US about further peace talks and expected new meetings to take place next week.

A first US-mediated meeting was held in the United Arab Emirates’s capital last week, marking the first direct public negotiations between Moscow and Kyiv since the early weeks of the war.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office this week that he believes “we are getting close” to a deal to end the war.

Trump announced on Thursday that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to his request not to attack Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for a week amid extreme cold weather, which he said was “very nice” of the Russian president.

The Kremlin confirmed on Friday that Putin had received the request, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov telling Sky News the Russian leader had “of course” agreed to the proposal.

Zelenskyy wrote on X that the issue of a ceasefire on energy infrastructure attacks had been discussed during last week’s talks, and that he expected the agreements to be implemented. “De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war,” he added.

On Friday, the Ukrainian leader said in his nightly address that neither Moscow nor Kyiv had conducted strikes ⁠on energy targets from Thursday night onwards.

Several sticking points over the US-backed plan to end the war remain, including Russia’s demand for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from about one-fifth of the Donetsk region, and the potential deployment of international peacekeepers in Ukraine after the war.

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.

The U.S. Navy’s top officer says global proliferation of increasingly capable air defense systems underscores the vital need to move ahead with work on the F/A-XX next-generation carrier-based fighter. He further warned that the Navy’s “ability to fly with impunity” using non-stealthy types like the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, even against smaller nation-state adversaries like Iran and non-state actors, is now “fleeting.”

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Daryl Caudle talked about F/A-XX and the threat ecosystem during a live question-and-answer session at the Apex Defense conference in Washington, D.C., yesterday. Breaking Defense was first to report on Caudle’s remarks. F/A-XX has been in purgatory since the Pentagon announced its intention to shelve it last year, primarily to prevent any competition for resources with the U.S. Air Force’s F-47 sixth-generation fighter. Congress is now pushing ahead with legislation that could jumpstart the Navy’s next-generation fighter program. Boeing and Northrop Grumman are currently in the running for F/A-XX. Lockheed Martin was reportedly eliminated from the competition last March. Boeing is also the prime contractor for the F-47.

The “next-generation airframe, F/A-XX, is so vital,” Caudle said yesterday. “This [carrier] air wing of the future design is so important for so many reasons … nothing delivers the mass of an air wing if you want to deliver mass fires.”

“I know these things are expensive, and I know the defense industrial base is compressed, but we have got to figure out how to walk and chew gum here with aircraft,” he added. It is worth noting here that both Boeing and Northrop Grumman have pushed back publicly, to different degrees, on concerns that the U.S. industrial base cannot support work on two sixth-generation fighter programs simultaneously.

You can listen to Adm. Caudle’s full opening remarks at the Apex Defense conference and the follow-on question-and-answer session in the video below.

CNO APEX REMARKS

Caudle has long been outspoken in his support for F/A-XX, which is the Navy’s planned successor to its F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighters and EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets. In addition to being very stealthy, the sixth-generation jets would come with increased range and other advancements, giving the Navy’s carrier air wings a major boost in kinetic capability. F/A-XX will also be able to perform electronic warfare and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions, as well as contribute to battle space management.

The CNO highlighted many of these expected capabilities in his comments yesterday. He also called particular attention to how “vital” F/A-XX will be because of “the CCAs [Collaborative Combat Aircraft drones] that it will command and control.”

“But the bigger part is … just the ever-lowering cost of entry” when it comes to air defense threats, Caudle said. “The folks that used to be not in [the] headspace that I needed a stealth aircraft of this level to fly a mission into their country, will gain capability that the F-18 will not match against.”

“This is an ever-evolving theme, and when you’ve got partnerships … well coupled with each other across China and Russia and Iran and North Korea, and terrorist groups that are getting that kit from all of those through back-channel ways, our ability to fly with impunity with our existing airframes is fleeting,” he continued. “So, if I don’t start building that [F/A-XX] immediately, you’re not going to get it for some time.”

“I hate to say it, sounds cliche, but you know, when things heat up in Iran, guess who steamed over there? Right? It was the United States Navy and the Abraham [Lincoln Carrier] Strike Group,” the Navy’s top officer added. “So you can imagine what that looks like 10 years from now, with a different Iran, with different capability, that can go against F-18 capabilities of today.”

U.S. military operations in and around the Middle East in the past two years have provided substantial evidence to underscore Caudle’s remarks. There were multiple reported instances in which Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen were able to threaten existing fourth and fifth-generation U.S. fighters, at least to a degree, with their relatively modest air defense capabilities. Sources differ on the total number, but the Houthis were also able to successfully down 20 or so MQ-9 Reaper drones.

TWZ has previously explored in detail the scale and scope of Houthi air defenses, as well as their ability to punch above their weight, and not just against U.S. forces. Infrared sensors and seekers, including the repurposing of heat-seeking air-to-air missiles as surface-to-air weapons, have been a major factor, given that they are not impacted by radar cross-section-reducing features on stealthy targets. They are also passive, meaning that they do not pump out signals that can give opponents advanced warning that they are being tracked and targeted.

Infrared capabilities can also help in cueing traditional radars, and pairing the two together offers benefits for spotting and tracking targets, whether they have features to reduce their radar and other signatures or not. This also just allows the radars to not have to start radiating (and expose themselves as a result) until very late in the engagement cycle. The Houthis have also focused heavily on mobile systems that are hard to find and fix in advance, and that present additional complications given their ability to pop up suddenly in unexpected locations.

The air defense assets the Houthis have arrayed over the past decade or so are directly reflective of developments in Iran, which has put a similar focus on infrared capabilities and mobile systems. Though B-2 stealth bombers were the centerpiece of the Operation Midnight Hammer strikes on Iranian nuclear sites last year, stealthy F-22 and F-35 fighters were still used to help clear the way by targeting air defense sites in the country.

This all, in many ways, reflects broader air defense global trends that have been emerging in China, Russia, North Korea, and elsewhere. As Adm. Caudle noted yesterday, there has also been cooperation on various levels between America’s adversaries, well beyond Iran and the Houthis, on the development and proliferation of more capable air defense systems.

The threat picture also goes beyond individual anti-air weapons and sensors. Fully-networked integrated air defenses, which offer a multitude of benefits when it comes to operational flexibility and more efficiently utilizing available resources, are only set to become a bigger part of the equation. These networks will be able to detect, successfully track, and engage targets in ways that federated air defense systems cannot. The barrier to entry in acquiring these capabilities is likely to keep dropping as time goes on, as well.

The Navy does still, of course, see F/A-XX as critical to projecting carrier-based airpower into denser, higher-end air defense threat ecosystems, especially in any future conflicts against a major competitor like China or Russia. A year ago, the U.S. Air Force released a report projecting that American aircraft will be challenged by anti-air missiles with ranges up to 1,000 miles by 2050.

“This [F/A-XX] is, again, a global solution, not just for a pressing scenario,” Adm. Caudle said yesterday.

As an aside, it is interesting to point out that the air defense arsenal of another smaller country, Syria, has been credited with helping ensure the F-22 survived post-Cold War drawdowns in defense spending. The program was severely truncated later on as a cost-cutting measure, a decision that has been increasingly questioned in hindsight.

The F/A-XX saga still has yet to play out, but Iranian air defenses, in particular, look to have emerged as a major factor in whatever the future might hold for that program.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

The Kremlin says it’s agreed to halt attacks on Kyiv and surrounding towns until February 1, after a request from US President Donald Trump pointing to the ‘record-setting cold’ gripping the region. Many Ukrainians have no heating, after Russian attacks on power infrastructure.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to increase his armed forces’ lethality as part of a strategy to disarm Moscow and turn a deadlocked negotiating table.

“The task of Ukrainian units is to ensure a level of destruction of the occupier at which Russian losses exceed the number of reinforcements they can send to their forces each month,” he told military personnel on Monday.

“We are talking about 50,000 Russian losses per month, this is the optimal level,” he said.

Video analysis, Zelenskyy recently said, showed 35,000 confirmed kills in December 2025, up from 30,000 in November and 26,000 in October. But on Monday, he clarified that the 35,000 were “killed and badly wounded occupiers”, who would not be returning to the battlefield.

His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, conservatively estimated “more than 33,000” confirmed kills in December.

Ukraine believes it has killed or maimed 1.2 million Russians since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently estimated that Russia had suffered 1.2mn casualties, including at least 325,000 deaths, and Ukraine up to 600,000 casualties, with as many as 140,000 deaths.

Al Jazeera cannot confirm casualty estimates from either side.

The war is currently stalemated, with Russia struggling to make meaningful territorial gains.

Russia held just more than a quarter of Ukraine a month into its full-scale war, in March 2022, according to geolocated footage.

The following month, Ukraine pushed Russian forces back from a string of northern cities – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv – leaving Russia in possession of one-fifth of the country.

In August and September 2022, then-ground forces commander Syrskii masterminded a campaign to push Russian forces east of the Oskil River in the northern Kharkiv region, and Russia itself withdrew east of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, leaving it with 17.8 percent of the country.

In the last three years, Russia increased that number to 19.3 percent.

For almost six months, Russia has struggled to seize two towns it has almost surrounded with 150,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“In Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, the Ukrainian Defence Forces continue to contain the enemy, which is trying to infiltrate the northern districts of both cities in small groups,” Syrskii said last week.

Russia claimed it had captured the northern city of Kupiansk last month, but Russian military reporters say Ukrainian forces have retaken control of the town and surrounded the Russian assault force within it.

The engine of war

Zelenskyy’s strategy involves increasing domestic drone production and honing the skills of drone operators, because drones now hit 80 percent of targets on the battlefield.

“In just the past year alone, 819,737 targets were hit – hit by drones. And we clearly record every single hit,” he said on Monday.

The military has instituted a point system, rewarding drone operators for the number and precision of their hits.

That reflects a system put in place in April 2024, offering financial rewards to ground troops for destroying Russian battlefield equipment, culminating in $23,000 for capturing a battle tank.

Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister this month, who previously served as digital transformation minister and deputy prime minister for innovation, education, science and technology.

Last week, Fedorov began to appoint his advisers. They include Serhiy Sternenko, who last year created Ukraine’s largest non-state supplier of military drones, to step up drone production. Fedorov’s former deputy at the digital transformation ministry, Valeriya Ionan, was put in charge of international collaborations, thanks to her experience with Silicon Valley giants like Google and Cisco. Fedorov also appointed Serhiy Beskrestnov as technological adviser. Beskrestnov is an expert on Russian drone and electronic warfare innovation.

Russian assaults pound Ukraine

Zelenskyy’s war aims stem in part from the fact that Russia refuses to give up its campaign to seize more of Ukraine.

Despite US President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire, talks remain deadlocked over the future of Donetsk.

Russia’s worst attack against Ukrainian cities and energy facilities last week came on Saturday, involving 375 drones and 21 missiles, as Russian, US and Ukrainian delegations were negotiating a ceasefire in Abu Dhabi.

The strike left 1.2 million homes without power nationwide, including 6,000 in Kyiv.

Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said 800,000 homes in Kyiv were still without power following three previous strikes this month. “Constant enemy attacks unfortunately keep the situation from being stabilised,” he wrote on social media.

Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an evening video address that electricity supply problems were still widespread in Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions.

“We are scaling up assistance points and warming centers,” he said, adding that 174 [crews] were working to fix the damage in Kyiv alone. Shmyal said 710,000 people were still without power in Kyiv.

A Czech grassroots initiative fundraised $6m to buy hundreds of electric generators for Ukrainian households. On Friday, the European Commission said it was sending 447 generators to Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russian drones killed three people. Two of them were a young couple in Kyiv killed when a drone struck their apartment building. Rescuers found only their four-year-old daughter alive.

“When I carried her out, the girl started crying very hard, and then she began to shake violently,” said Marian Kushnir, a journalist who was a neighbour of the couple.

At least five more people died when a drone struck a passenger train in the northern Kharkiv region, and two children and a pregnant woman were wounded when 50 drones rained down on the southern port of Odesa.

Talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a ceasefire. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said before they began that Russia was not willing to compromise on any of its territorial demands.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks were focusing on the nub of disagreement between the two sides, which is Ukraine’s refusal to hand over the remaining one-fifth of Donetsk that Moscow does not control.

Talks are scheduled to continue in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, officials said.

Unvarnished truth from Zelenskyy

In a scathing speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelenskyy accused his European allies of “wait-hoping” the Russian threat would disappear after almost four years of war in Ukraine.

“Europe relies only on the belief that if danger comes, NATO will act. But no one has really seen the Alliance in action. If Putin decides to take Lithuania or strike Poland, who will respond?” Zelenskyy asked.

US President Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland by force on January 17, he said, revealed Europe’s lack of readiness when seven Nordic countries sent 40 soldiers to the island.

“If you send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland – what is that for? What message does it send? What’s the message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin? To China? And even more importantly, what message does it send to Denmark – the most important – your close ally?”

In contrast, said Zelenskyy, Trump was willing to seize Russian tankers selling sanctioned oil, and put Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug charges, while Putin, an indicted war criminal, remained free. “No security guarantees work without the US,” he said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte echoed those sentiments in a speech to the European Parliament on Monday [January 26].

“If anyone thinks here . . . that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” he said. “You can’t.”

Ukraine’s Zelenskyy welcomed possible one-week pause after Russian attacks left homes with no heat in plummeting temperatures.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has welcomed United States President Donald Trump’s announcement that Russia will not attack Kyiv and “various” Ukrainian towns for seven days as civilians struggle with a lack of heating amid freezing winter temperatures.

In a post on social media on Thursday, Zelenskyy said that Trump’s comments earlier in the day were an “important statement” about “the possibility of providing security for Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during this extreme winter period”.

Zelenskyy said that the pause in bombing had been discussed by negotiators during recent ceasefire talks in the United Arab Emirates, and that they “expect the agreements to be implemented”.

“De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war,” the Ukrainian leader added.

Trump said earlier on Thursday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to his request not to fire on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv for a week due to severely low temperatures.

“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and various towns for a week, and he agreed to do that,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting, citing the “extraordinary cold” in the region.

The announcements came as Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on the Telegram messaging app on Thursday that 454 residential buildings remain without heating in the city, as the Ukrainian capital struggles to restore power to homes following repeated Russian bombings targeting power and heating infrastructure in recent weeks.

Temperatures are forecast to drop to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight in the Ukrainian capital this week.

Russia’s capital Moscow has experienced its heaviest snowfall in 200 years during the month of January, the meteorological observatory of Lomonosov Moscow State University said on Thursday, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.

Russia and Ukraine also exchanged the bodies of soldiers killed in the war on Thursday, officials from both countries confirmed.

Similar exchanges have been agreed to during previous rounds of ceasefire talks. However, a breakthrough on ending Russia’s nearly four-year war on Ukraine has remained elusive.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov continued to pour cold water on ceasefire prospects on Thursday, saying that Moscow had yet to see a 20-point ceasefire plan that he said had been “reworked” by Ukraine and its allies.

Russia’s top diplomat also claimed that Ukraine had used brief pauses in fighting to “push” people to the front lines, according to TASS.

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.

BREAKINGBREAKING,

Kremlin has not indicated whether it will agree to al-Sharaa’s repeated requests for Bashar al-Assad’s extradition.

Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa is meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow as the latter seeks to shore up Russia’s presence in the country, including militarily, just over a year after al-Sharaa ousted Russia’s former ally, Bashar al-Assad.

Speaking at a news conference before their meeting on Wednesday, al-Sharaa thanked Putin for supporting unity in Syria and what he said was the “historic” role Russia had played in the “stability of the region”.

Putin expressed his support for al-Sharaa’s ongoing efforts to stabilise Syria and congratulated him on gaining momentum towards “restoring the territorial integrity of Syria”.

Putin and al-Sharaa spent more than a decade on opposing sides of Syria’s civil war, prompting concerns in Moscow about the future of Russia’s military presence there.

Before the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “the presence of our soldiers in Syria” would be discussed. They are stationed at the Khmeimim airbase and the Tartous naval base in Syria’s Mediterranean coastal region.

Earlier this week, Russia reportedly withdrew its forces from the Qamishli airport in Kurdish-held northeastern Syria, leaving it with only its two Mediterranean bases – now its only military outposts outside the former Soviet Union.

Amberin Zaman, a correspondent with the Middle East news outlet Al-Monitor, published footage that she said was from the abandoned base in Qamishli on Monday.

Syria had historically been one of Moscow’s closest allies in the Middle East. Their ties go back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union provided extensive military and other types of support to the Baathist regime in Damascus, led first by Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar.

Moscow had been worried about the possibility of a “populist anti-Russia” government emerging in Damascus when Bashar al-Assad was overthrown, Samuel Ramani, an associate fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank, told Al Jazeera.

“They feared he [al-Sharaa] would squeeze them out, but the Russians have been pleasantly surprised, even if they’ve had to downgrade their ties from before,” Ramani added.

Pragmatic approach

Al-Sharaa has taken a pragmatic approach, Ramani said, seeking to build his own relations with extra-regional powers as a hedge against possible political swings in the United States.

“The Republicans are lenient towards Syria engaging Russia as long as they keep Iran out,” Ramani said, “whereas the Democrats have been more sceptical overall and have wanted to move slower on the removal of sanctions and other issues.”

“Al-Sharaa also needs Russia, and that is why he is engaging,” he said.

Al-Sharaa played down Russia’s role in Syria’s war and sought to strike a friendlier tone during his first visit to Moscow in October despite Russia providing refuge to Bashar al-Assad and his wife, who fled the country in December 2024 as al-Sharaa-led opposition fighters advanced towards Damascus.

Al-Sharaa has requested al-Assad’s extradition and said at an event last month that there would be justice for Syrians who were victims of the former president’s repression.

Putin will be especially eager to maintain Russia’s presence in Syria, having lost another ally this month when the US sent special forces to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

On Tuesday, Russian Defence Minister Andrey Removich Belousov said after a meeting with his Chinese counterpart that Moscow was closely monitoring the situation in Venezuela and with Iran, which has close ties with Russia and has been facing threats of attack from the US in recent weeks.

Syria’s new leaders have reoriented the country’s foreign policy away from Russia and have said they’re seeking to build a strategic relationship with the US, which has been reciprocated by the Trump administration.

The US appeared not to follow through with warnings to the Syrian government against engaging the Kurdish-led, US-supported Syrian Democratic Forces this month but later helped broker a truce to end the fighting.

A fragile ceasefire is now in place and has been largely holding.

A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region has killed at least five people. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denounced the attack as an act of terrorism.

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.