Russian

Moscow ‘strongly condemns’ attack on airport in the capital, Niamey, where 20 rebels were killed, and four soldiers were wounded.

Russian soldiers helped repel an attack claimed by the ISIL (ISIS) armed group on Niger’s main airport in the capital, Niamey, last week, according to Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“The attack was repelled through the joint efforts of the Russian Ministry of Defence’s African Corps and the Nigerien armed forces,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

Niger’s governing military earlier said that “Russian partners” had helped to fend off the rare assault on the capital, which saw 20 attackers, including a French national, killed and four army soldiers wounded.

At least 11 fighters were also captured, Niger’s state television reported.

“Moscow strongly condemns this latest extremist attack,” the Foreign Ministry added in the statement, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.

“A similar attack took place in September 2024 on the international airport in the capital of Mali. According to available information, external forces providing instructor and technical support are involved,” the ministry said, according to TASS.

Niger’s military chief, Abdourahamane Tchiani, visited the Russian military base in Niamey to express “personal gratitude for a high-level of professionalism” by Russian forces in defending the airport, the ministry added.

ISIL claimed responsibility for the “surprise and coordinated attack” on the airbase at the Diori Hamani international airport near Niamey on the night of January 28.

A video published online through the ISIL-affiliated media Amaq showed several dozen attackers with assault rifles firing near an aircraft hangar and setting ablaze one plane before leaving on motorbikes.

Ulf Laessing, the head of the Sahel programme at Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told The Associated Press news agency that the sophistication and boldness of the attack, including the possible use of drones by the attackers, suggest that the assailants may have had inside help.

Previous successful attacks in the region appear to have increased the group’s confidence, leading them to target more sensitive and strategically important sites, Laessing said.

Niger’s military had initially accused Benin, France and the Ivory Coast of sponsoring the attack on the airport, which also houses a military base. The military, however, did not provide evidence to substantiate its claim.

Ivory Coast’s Foreign Ministry denied the allegation and summoned Niger’s ambassador to relay its protest. Benin also denied the claim, describing it as “not very credible”.

France has yet to comment.

Niger is a former colony of France, which maintained a military presence in the country until 2023.

Russia rarely comments on its military activity in the Sahel region, where Moscow has been increasing its influence in recent years.

Facing isolation since its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has tried to build new military and political partnerships across Africa.

Apart from Niger, Russian troops or military instructors have been reported to be deployed in Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, the Central African Republic and Libya.

Russia’s African Corps has taken over from the Wagner mercenary force across the continent. According to Moscow, the corps helps ” fighting terrorists” and is “strengthening regional stability” in the Sahel.

Niger’s authorities have been fighting the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the ISIL affiliate in the Sahel (EIS) for the past decade.

Feb. 2 (UPI) — A Russian drone strike in Ukraine’s southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region has killed at least 12 miners and injured eight more, according to officials who are accusing the Kremlin of attacking unarmed civilians.

DTEK Group, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said a Russian drone struck a bus transporting staff from its Dnipropetrovsk mine, resulting in at least 20 casualties.

“The bus was hit as it was taking miners home after their shift,” the company said in a statement.

The strike was part of a large-scale Russian assault on DTEK’s mining facilities in the region, the company said as it extended its condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed.

Maxim Teimchenko, CEO of DTEK, accused Russia of conducting “an unprovoked terrorist attack on a purely civilian target.”

“This attack marks the single largest loss of life of DTEK employees since russia’s full-scale invasion and is one of the darkest days in our history,” he said.

“Their sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

Serhii Berskresnov, a Ukraine Defense Ministry adviser, identified the weapon used in the attack on Telegram as an Iran-made Shahed drone.

Using a MESH radio modem, the drone pilot deliberately attacked the bus after spotting it on the road, he said.

The drone struck near the bus, with its blast wave forcing the driver to lose control and crash into a fence, he said, adding that as the injured were exiting the vehicle, a second Shahed drone struck.

“The operators operating from the territory of Russia 100% saw and identified the target as civilian, saw they were not military and made a conscious decision to attack,” he said.

“This is yet another act of terrorism. I have no words.”

Russia has been widely accused of committing war crimes in its nearly 3-year-old war in Ukraine. From indiscriminate attacks on civilians to executions, torture and forced deportations, Russia has been repeatedly denounced for alleged war crimes that it denies.

The International Criminal Court has formally opened a war crimes and crimes against humanity investigation into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has issued arrest warrants for Russian officials, including its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin.

The strike was one of numerous Russian attacks across Ukraine on Sunday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stating on X that people throughout the country were without heat and electricity. Railway infrastructure was hit in the Sumy region, he said.

During the month of January, Russia launched more than 6,000 attack drones, 5,550 guided aerial bombs and 158 missiles at Ukraine, Zelensky said.

“Virtually all of it targeted the energy sector, the railways and our infrastructure — everything that sustains normal life.”

On Saturday, Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia, injuring six people, according to Prime Minister Yulia Svydenko.

“This is the nature of Russia’s war,” she said.

The attacks occurred during a cold February that has seen the temperatures drop well below freezing, according to the country’s hydrometeorological center.

The strikes come despite U.S. President Donald Trump stating last week that Putin promised him that Russia would refrain from hitting Ukraine for a week.

“I personally asked President Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week, and he agreed to that,” he said during a cabinet meeting without making clear which towns, cities and regions that the Russian leader had agreed not to attack.

“We’re very happy that they did it.”

Trump has been pushing since before he returned to office to end the war, which he vowed to do during his first 24 hours back in the White House.

Zelensky confirmed Sunday that dates for the next trilateral meetings for a cease-fire between the United States and Russia have been set for Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi.

“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.

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.

From farmers protesting in Europe against a trade agreement between the European Union and the South American bloc Mercosur to deadly attacks in Pakistan’s Balochistan province that killed nearly 200 people and demonstrations in Cuba opposing threats by the United States, here is a look at the week in photos.

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.”

As both sides in the war in Ukraine continue their campaigns of long-range drone attacks, the Ukrainian government’s internal security agency has released a compilation of strikes directed against Russian airbases. The video, published by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), records drone strikes against Russian military aircraft by its special forces unit, the “Alpha Group,” also known as “A” Special Operations Center.

“The enemy is used to feeling safe in the deep rear. But for the special forces of “Alpha,” distance has long ceased to matter,” the SBU wrote in a post accompanying the video on social media.

The footage shows several Russian aircraft being targeted, from the perspective of the attacking drones. It appears that most, if not all, of these strikes were previously claimed, and some have been previously seen in the form of video stills. But the end result is certainly impressive, presuming all of the targeted aircraft were damaged or destroyed — which is far from clear from these videos.

The SBU claims that the total value of the damage was more than $1 billion, although it’s far from clear how this was calculated, especially since some of the airframes in question are decades old and no longer in production. It’s also notable that the SBU figure includes damage inflicted on ammunition and fuel depots at the airfields in question.

Regardless, the 15 aircraft claimed targeted by the SBU appear to comprise:

From what can be seen, the An-26 appears to have been damaged beyond repair, while one Su-24 seems to have had at least its tail section damaged; available satellite imagery may show a destroyed Su-24, but the quality of the imagery means that it can’t be determined for sure.

These aircraft were targeted at five different airfields, the SBU stated, without disclosing their exact locations.

However, based on open-source analysis, it seems that the targeted bases included Belbek, Kirovskoye, Saky, and Simferopol, all in Russian-occupied Crimea.

The growing threat of attacks like these on airbases has prompted Russia to build new hardened aircraft shelters and embark on additional construction to help shield aircraft from drone strikes and other indirect fire. This is part of a broader push by the Russian military to improve physical defenses at multiple airfields following the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The highlighted airfield raids in the video are part of a wider Ukrainian drone campaign carried out last year, in which the SBU also targeted Russian air defense systems, radar installations, and critical energy infrastructure.

As far as air defense systems are concerned, the SBU claims that it destroyed Russian equipment worth an estimated $4 billion last year. These included S-300, S-350, and S-400 surface-to-air missile systems, as well as advanced radar systems such as the Nebo-M, Podlet, and Protivnik-GE.

In 2025, Ukraine also carried out the spectacular Operation Spiderweb, a large-scale Ukrainian drone strike against airbases across Russia in June. This targeted Moscow’s fleet of strategic bombers and saw a reported 117 drones launched against at least four airfields.

New footage from Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb hitting Russian bombers

Notable also is the fact that the specific Ukrainian campaign against Russian airfields is something that was brought up by U.S. President Donald Trump in a telephone call with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, last summer. The timing of that call suggests that Operation Spiderweb prompted that discussion.

Lots of people are reposting this Trump Truth Social post as if it’s recent (in part because Ukraine just released another video of hitting parked Russian warplanes), but it is in fact from last summer. pic.twitter.com/8jodT8bm7H

— Yaroslav Trofimov (@yarotrof) January 29, 2026

Ukraine’s ability to strike high-value Russian targets at considerable range has been bolstered through the addition of long-range cruise missiles, as well as an expanding inventory of attack drones, both large and small.

Meanwhile, SBU is continuing its long-range drone strikes.

Overnight on January 13, the security agency teamed up with the Ukrainian Navy to attack a drone production facility in Taganrog, where several production halls appear to have been destroyed, based on satellite analysis.

Ukrainian Defenders destroyed several warehouses of Atlant Aero plant in Taganrog, Russia. Combat drones and their parts were produced there.

Glory! pic.twitter.com/P6RcfpXtbl

— Anton Gerashchenko (@Gerashchenko_en) January 16, 2026

The facility in question, the Atlant Aero factory, is responsible, among others, for producing Russia’s Molniya loitering munition, widely used in Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces reportedly hit a Russian drone factory in the city of Taganrog tonight, setting it ablaze.

Multiple explosions were reported at the Atlant drone company, manufacturer of the Molniya-series attack drones. pic.twitter.com/yr3SA3b7gV

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) January 13, 2026

Drones being used to strike enemy facilities producing drones is very much indicative of the path the war has taken, when it comes to the increasing use and diversity of uncrewed systems across all fronts.

For its part, Russia employed a BM-35 loitering munition to attack what was claimed by some observers to be a Ukrainian F-16 fighter at Kanatove Air Base in Ukraine’s Kirovohrad region, on January 26. In fact, the target was either a decoy or a ground-instructional aid, something that even Russia’s Rubicon Drone Operations Center attested to.

This is not the first time that a Russian drone strike has claimed a Ukrainian aircraft mock-up, but again demonstrates the potential vulnerability of airfields to these kinds of attacks.

Notably, too, the BM-35 drone used in the strike is reported to use satellite connectivity via Starlink, allowing operators to control it in real time over long distances.

The SBU’s latest ‘greatest hits’ compilation underscores how drone attacks on Russian military aircraft are one of its highest priorities and one that we will certainly see targeted again in the months to come.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com