Day: January 23, 2026

Russia has carried out fresh drone and missile attacks on Ukraine even as talks with the United States continue in an effort to end the war.“One person has been killed and four others have been injured in a massive enemy attack on the capital,” Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov also said the eastern city faced a long and heavy assault. He reported that at least 19 people were injured as Russian forces hit homes and other buildings with drones and missiles. The attacks came while Russia, Ukraine and the United States were holding talks in Abu Dhabi. This is the first time the three sides have met together since Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Read more: Peace talks tomorrow if Russia leaves Ukraine: Zelensky According to a source quoted by the BBC, the talks have made some progress. However, the most difficult issue, the future of occupied Ukrainian land, is still not resolved. Ukrainian officials say the latest strikes show that Russia is still using force while discussing peace. Air defence systems were active overnight in several cities as people took shelter. The war, now in its fourth year, has killed tens of thousands of people and forced millions to leave their homes. Despite many rounds of diplomacy, a full ceasefire has not yet been reached. Read more: Russia open to direct peace talks with Ukraine: Putin Russia occupies roughly 20% of Ukraine, including parts of the eastern Donbas region. The Kremlin wants Ukraine to hand over large areas of the territory. Ukraine has ruled this out. As the three-way talks in Abu Dhabi enter a second day, Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Telegram that three of the four people who had been injured had been hospitalised. He added that the capital’s critical infrastructure had been damaged, which had left 6,000 buildings without heating. Read more: US will ‘move on’ from Ukraine peace talks Temperatures in Ukraine are at sub-zero levels, and in a statement following the assaults, President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “The main target of the Russians was the energy infrastructure.” In Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said 19 people had been injured during the strikes in the early hours of Saturday morning. A maternity hospital and a hostel for displaced people were damaged. Source: BBC

Ukraine condemned deadly Russian attacks on Saturday, even as negotiators from Russia, Ukraine, and…

The russians are facing non-stop military losses on Ukrainian soil. About 1,233,020 aggressor’s troops were eliminated, 119,020 air targets of invaders were shot down, thousands of tanks, armored vehicles and trucks were destroyed by the defenders of Ukraine

Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in Abu Dhabi on Friday to tackle the vital issue of territory, with no sign of a compromise, as Russian airstrikes plunged Ukraine into its worst energy crisis of the nearly four-year war.Kyiv is under mounting US pressure to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede its entire eastern industrial area of Donbas before it stops fighting. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the territorial dispute was a central issue for the tripartite talks, including Russian, Ukrainian and US officials, which were scheduled to conclude on Saturday. “The most important thing is that Russia should be ready to end this war, which it started,” Zelensky said in a statement on the Telegram app, adding he was in regular contact with the Ukrainian negotiators, but it was too early to draw conclusions from Friday’s talks. Read more: Ukraine working to restore power in southeast after Russian strikes “We’ll see how the conversation goes tomorrow and what the outcome will be.” Rustem Umerov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council and the head of its delegation, said in a statement the talks had discussed parameters for ending the war and the “further logic of the negotiation process.” The negotiations come a day after Zelensky met with US President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Zelensky said on Friday that a deal on US security guarantees for Ukraine was ready and that he was only waiting on Trump for a specific date and place to sign it. Ukraine has sought robust security guarantees from Western allies in the event of a peace deal to prevent Russia, which has shown little interest in ending the war, from invading again. Read more: Russia, Ukraine accuse each other of civilian attacks over New Year Russia steps up attacks on power infrastructure The tripartite talks, brokered by the US, are unfolding against a backdrop of intensified Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy system that have cut power and heating to major cities such as Kyiv, as temperatures dip well below freezing. The head of Ukraine’s top private power producer, Maxim Timchenko, told Reuters on Friday the situation was nearing a “humanitarian catastrophe” and that Ukraine needs a ceasefire that halts attacks on energy infrastructure. Kyiv’s energy minister said on Thursday that Ukraine’s power grid had endured its most difficult day since a widespread blackout in November 2022, when Russia began bombing energy infrastructure. Russia says it wants a diplomatic solution but will keep working to achieve its goals by military means as long as a negotiated solution remains elusive. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demand that Ukraine surrender the 20% it still holds of the Donetsk region of the Donbas – about 5,000 sq km – has proven a major stumbling block to a breakthrough deal. Read more: Zelensky hails ‘new ideas’ on peace after talks with US envoys Zelensky refuses to give up land that Russia has not been able to capture in four years of grinding, attritional warfare. Polls show little appetite among Ukrainians for territorial concessions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s insistence on Ukraine yielding all of Donbas was “a very important condition.” A source close to the Kremlin told Reuters that Moscow considers an “Anchorage formula”—which Russia says was agreed between Trump and Putin at a summit in Alaska last August—would hand Russia control of all of Donbas and freeze the front lines elsewhere in Ukraine’s east and south. Donetsk is one of four Ukrainian regions. Moscow said in 2022 it was annexing after referendums rejected by Kyiv and Western nations as bogus. Most countries recognise Donetsk as part of Ukraine. Moscow wants use of frozen assets Russia has also floated the idea of using the bulk of nearly $5 billion of Russian assets frozen in the United States to fund a recovery of Russian-occupied territory inside Ukraine. Ukraine, backed by European allies, demands that Russia pay it reparations. Read more: Russian general killed by car bomb in Moscow Asked about Russia’s idea, Zelensky dismissed it as “nonsense.” Zelensky said on Thursday in Davos that the Abu Dhabi talks would be the first trilateral meetings involving Ukrainian and Russian envoys and US mediators since the war began. Last year, Russian and Ukrainian delegations had their first face-to-face meeting since 2022 when they met in Istanbul. A top Ukrainian military intelligence officer also had talks with US and Russian delegations in Abu Dhabi in November.

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These are the key developments from day 1,430 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.