Wars 2022 02/24 Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

[Saif]

Russia attacks two Ukrainian ports, Kyiv says

Russia attacked two seaports in Ukraine's Odesa region on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring eight others, Ukrainian officials said. Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine's ports and foreign-flagged vessels sailing from them in recent weeks, after President Vladimir Putin vowed to cut Ukr

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Russia attacks two Ukrainian ports, Kyiv says

REUTERS
Published :
Jan 08, 2026 00:25
Updated :
Jan 08, 2026 00:25

Russia attacked two seaports in Ukraine's Odesa region on Wednesday, killing one person and injuring eight others, Ukrainian officials said.

Russia has repeatedly attacked Ukraine's ports and foreign-flagged vessels sailing from them in recent weeks, after President Vladimir Putin vowed to cut Ukraine off from the sea in retaliation for Kyiv's strikes on unregulated oil tankers sailing to Russia.

Ukraine's seaport administration said the attacked ports were Chornomorsk and Pivdennyi, both key export arteries for Ukraine's commodity-heavy economy.

"This is yet another attack by a terrorist country on port infrastructure that is involved in ensuring global food security," deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba said.

Moscow attacked the Odesa region seaports 96 times in 2025, Ukraine's seaports authority told Reuters on Wednesday, nearly triple the number of attacks in 2024.

Port facilities, administrative buildings and tanks containing vegetable oil were damaged in Wednesday's attacks, Kuleba said, adding that the ports were continuing to operate even as the damage was being cleared.

Russia escalated strikes on Ukrainian ports in December after Ukraine conducted strikes on empty "shadow fleet" tankers, which Moscow uses to ship its oil to buyers despite Western sanctions. Kyiv has long sought to curtail this revenue stream, which it says is funding Russia's war in Ukraine.​

 

[Saif]

Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine

Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday..

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Russia strikes power plant, kills four in Ukraine
Agence France-Presse . Kharkiv, Ukraine 13 January, 2026, 23:27

Ukrainian rescuers clear the rubble at the site of a heavily damaged Nova Poshta postal company terminal following an air attack in Novyi Korotych, Kharkiv region, on Tuesday, amid the Russian attack of Ukraine. | — AFP photo

Russia battered Ukraine with more than two dozen missiles and hundreds of drones early Tuesday, killing four people and pummelling another power plant, piling more pressure on Ukraine’s brittle energy system.

Moscow has pummelled Ukraine with daily drone and missile barrages in recent months, targeting energy infrastructure and cutting power and heating in the frigid height of winter.


An AFP journalist in the eastern Kharkiv region, where the four people were killed, saw firefighters battling a fire at a postal hub and rescue workers helping survivors by lamp light in freezing temperatures.

Andriy Pidnebesny, a manager at the postal facility, said he was knocked down by the blast wave and tried — but failed — to free several colleagues still alive under the rubble.

‘You never know what will happen to you. You go out to the store and you could get killed. You go to work and the same thing could happen. You could be sleeping at home and the same thing could happen,’ the 31-year-old said.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said ‘several hundred thousand’ households near Kyiv were without power after the strikes, and again called on allies to bolster his country’s air defence systems.

‘The world can respond to this Russian terror with new assistance packages for Ukraine,’ Zelensky wrote on social media.

‘Russia must come to learn that cold will not help it win the war,’ he added.

Authorities in Kyiv and the surrounding region rolled out emergency power cuts in the hours after the attack, saying freezing temperatures were complicating their work.

AFP journalists in Kyiv saw customers walking through a darkened grocery store that was running just one or two cash registers from a rumbling generator.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest energy provider, said Russian forces had struck one of its power plants, saying it was the eighth such attack since October.


The operator did not reveal which of its plants was struck, but said Russia had attacked its power plants over 220 times since Moscow invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The Ukrainian air force said that Tuesday’s bombardment included 25 missiles and 293 drones.

The Kharkiv governor gave the death toll and added that six people were wounded in the overnight hit outside the region’s main city, also called Kharkiv.

White helmeted emergency workers could be seen clambering through the still-smoking wreckage of a building used by postal company Nova Poshta, in a video posted by the regional prosecutor’s office.

Within Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said a Russian long-range drone struck a medical facility for children, causing a fire. No casualties were reported.

The overnight strikes hit other regions as well, including southern city Odesa.

Residential buildings, a hospital and a kindergarten were damaged, with at least five people wounded in two waves of attacks, regional governor Sergiy Lysak said.

The Russian defence ministry acknowledged its attacks, claiming its strikes targeted Ukrainian military facilities.

Russia’s use last week of a nuclear-capable Oreshnik ballistic missile on Ukraine sparked condemnation from Kyiv’s allies, including Washington, which called it a ‘dangerous and inexplicable escalation of this war’.

Moscow on Monday said the missile hit an aviation repair factory in the Lviv region and that it was fired in response to Ukraine’s attempt to strike one of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s residences — a claim Kyiv denies and that Washington has said it does not believe happened.

Ukraine has stepped up long-range drone strikes on Russian military and energy sites in response.

Kyiv said Tuesday its forces had struck a drone manufacturing plant in the western Rostov region and the governor reported a local state of emergency there after two ‘enterprises’ were hit.​

 

[Saif]

Russia destroys large energy facility in Kharkiv, mayor says

Russian forces have destroyed a large energy facility in Ukraine's second-biggest city Kharkiv, the mayor said on Thursday, the latest target of a winter air campaign by Moscow that has plunged millions of Ukrainians into darkness and cold. Russia has attacked the power grid and other energy facil

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Russia destroys large energy facility in Kharkiv, mayor says

bdnews24.com
Published :
Jan 15, 2026 22:50
Updated :
Jan 15, 2026 22:50

Russian forces have destroyed a large energy facility in Ukraine's second-biggest city Kharkiv, the mayor said on Thursday, the latest target of a winter air campaign by Moscow that has plunged millions of Ukrainians into darkness and cold.

Russia has attacked the power grid and other energy facilities while pressing a battlefield offensive that has left Kyiv on the back foot as it faces US pressure to secure peace.

Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, did not specify what sort of facility had been hit, but said emergency crews were on the scene and working around the clock.

Kharkiv, just 25 km from the Russian border, has been regularly targeted by drones, missiles and glide bombs throughout the war, which enters its fifth year next month.

Regional governor Oleh Synehubov said officials were still trying to assess the extent of damage from Thursday's attack.

Power outages and cuts to heating and water in major cities have worsened over the past week as Ukraine struggles with a cold snap that has overwhelmed the already hobbled energy system.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Thursday that around 300 apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital remain without heat after a January 9 attack knocked out heating to half the city's high-rises.

Russia has also stepped up attacks on ports in Ukraine's southern Odesa region. A missile strike on Thursday injured one person and damaged shipping containers in the city of Chornomorsk, said deputy prime minister Oleksiy Kuleba.​

 

[Saif]

Trump says Zelensky, not Putin, is holding up a Ukraine peace deal

US President Donald Trump told Reuters that Ukraine - not Russia - is holding up a potential peace deal, a rhetoric that stands in marked contrast to that of European allies, who have consistently argued Moscow has little interest in ending its war in Ukraine. In an exclusive interview in the Oval

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Trump says Zelensky, not Putin, is holding up a Ukraine peace deal

REUTERS
Published :
Jan 15, 2026 10:44
Updated :
Jan 15, 2026 10:44

US President Donald Trump told Reuters that Ukraine - not Russia - is holding up a potential peace deal, a rhetoric that stands in marked contrast to that of European allies, who have consistently argued Moscow has little interest in ending its war in Ukraine.

In an exclusive interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to wrap up his nearly four-year-old invasion of Ukraine. Zelensky, the US president said, was more reticent.

"I think he's ready to make a deal," Trump said of the Russian president. "I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal."

Asked why US-led negotiations had not yet resolved Europe's largest land conflict since World War Two, Trump responded: "Zelensky."

Trump's comments suggested renewed frustration with the Ukrainian leader. The two presidents have long had a volatile relationship, though their interactions seem to have improved over Trump's first year back in office.

At times, Trump has been more willing to accept Putin's assurances at face value than the leaders of some US allies, frustrating Kyiv, European capitals and US lawmakers, including some Republicans.

In December, Reuters reported that US intelligence reports continued to warn that Putin had not abandoned his aims of capturing all of Ukraine and reclaiming parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard disputed that report at the time.

'HAVING A HARD TIME GETTING THERE'

After several fits and starts, US-led negotiations have been centred in recent weeks on security guarantees for a post-war Ukraine to ensure that Russia does not invade it again after a potential peace deal. In broad terms, US negotiators have pushed Ukraine to abandon its eastern Donbas region as part of any accord with Russia.

Ukrainian officials have been deeply involved in recent talks, which have been led on the US side by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law. Some European officials have cast doubt on the likelihood of Putin agreeing to some terms recently hashed out by Kyiv, Washington and European leaders.

Trump told Reuters he was not aware of a potential upcoming trip to Moscow by Witkoff and Kushner, which Bloomberg reported earlier on Wednesday.

Asked if he would meet Zelensky at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, next week, Trump said he would but implied no plans were set.

"I would - if he's there," Trump said. "I'm going to be there."

Asked why he believed Zelensky was holding back on negotiations, Trump did not elaborate, saying only: "I just think he's, you know, having a hard time getting there."

Zelensky has publicly ruled out any territorial concessions to Moscow, saying Kyiv has no right under the country's constitution to give up any land.​

 

[Saif]

Russia kills 6 in Ukraine, hits energy sites

Russian forces killed six people and wounded dozens of others, including two children and a pregnant woman, in attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities, Kyiv announced Tuesday...

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Russia kills 6 in Ukraine, hits energy sites
Agence France-Presse . Odesa, Ukraine 28 January, 2026, 01:03

Ukrainian rescuers work among the rubble of a heavily damaged residential building following an air attack in Odesa on January 27, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | AFP photo

Russian forces killed six people and wounded dozens of others, including two children and a pregnant woman, in attacks on Ukraine’s energy facilities, Kyiv announced Tuesday.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the latest bombardment undermined peace efforts and urged allies to step up pressure on Moscow to end the war, which is grinding towards its fourth anniversary.

‘Every such Russian strike erodes the diplomacy that is still on-going and undermines the efforts of partners who are helping to end this war,’ he wrote on social media.

A Russian drone barrage killed two people whose bodies were retrieved from rubble and wounded nearly three dozen people in the southern city of Odesa, regional officials said.

The Black Sea city key for Ukrainian exports has been pummelled routinely by Russian forces since they invaded Ukraine nearly four years ago.

Ukrainian private energy firm DTEK said Russian forces had inflicted ‘enormous’ damage on one of its facilities in the Odesa region that would take time to repair.

The governor Oleg Kiper said Russia had launched more than 50 attack drones on the region, damaging dozens of residential buildings, a church and schools.

An AFP journalist on the scene saw rescue workers digging for survivors in the debris at a residential building.

The attack wounded at least 32 people, including two girls and a woman 39 weeks pregnant, he said.

A married couple aged 45 and 48 were killed in Sloviansk in the eastern Donetsk region, a key prize for the Kremlin, which has concentrated its firepower there.

Their 20-year-old son survived the attack in the region that the Kremlin claims to have annexed, local prosecutors said.

In a separate drone attack in the southern region of Zaporizhzhia, a 58-year-old was killed in their home. A 72-year was also killed in her home by Russian shelling in the southern Kherson region.

Russian drone and missile attacks have recently knocked out power, lighting and heat to millions of Ukrainians across the country.

The Ukrainian air force said Russia had launched 165 attack drones overnight, and Ukrainian officials said an infrastructure facility in the western Lviv region was hit.

State gas company Naftogaz said the attack had left one of its facilities on fire in western Ukraine, describing it as the fifth attack of its kind this month.

Russian forces meanwhile are advancing across the front. The Russian defence ministry announced on Tuesday it had captured two more villages in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv.​

 

[Saif]

2m military casualties in Ukraine war: study

Russia’s grinding invasion of Ukraine has caused nearly two million military casualties — killed, wounded or missing — between the two countries, according to a study published Tuesday by a US think tank...

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2m military casualties in Ukraine war: study
Agence France-Presse . Washington 28 January, 2026, 21:50

Russia’s grinding invasion of Ukraine has caused nearly two million military casualties — killed, wounded or missing — between the two countries, according to a study published Tuesday by a US think tank.

Moscow’s forces have borne the brunt of the losses, suffering as many as 3,25,000 killed out of an estimated total of 1.2 million casualties since invading Ukraine nearly four years ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies found.

‘No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,’ CSIS said, noting that ‘Russian forces are advancing remarkably slowly on the battlefield.’

Ukrainian forces have also suffered major losses — between 5,00,000 and 6,00,000 casualties, of which between 1,00,000 and 1,40,000 were killed — from February 2022 to December 2025, the think tank said.

‘Combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties may be as high as 1.8 million and could reach two million total casualties by the spring of 2026,’ CSIS said.

In February 2025, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky told a US television outlet that his country had lost nearly 46,000 troops since 2022 — a figure that analysts consider an underestimate — while tens of thousands of others were missing or had been taken prisoner.

The BBC’s Russian service and the Mediazona outlet, which rely on publicly available data such as death notices, have identified more than 163,000 Russian soldiers killed in four years of war, while acknowledging that the actual number is likely higher.

The war has also taken a heavy toll on civilians, with United Nations monitors recording more civilian deaths in Ukraine in 2025 than in any other year except 2022.

More than 2,500 civilians were killed and over 12,000 wounded in 2025, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said, noting that the UN has verified almost 15,000 civilian deaths since 2022, but that the total ‘is likely considerably higher.’​

 

[Saif]

Kremlin says agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv until Sunday

The Kremlin on Friday said president Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop striking Kyiv for a week — ending Sunday — following a request by his US counterpart Donald Trump.

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Kremlin says agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv until Sunday
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 31 January, 2026, 01:25

Visitors use a flashlight as they visit an exhibition during a power outage at the National Art Museum in Kyiv on Friday, amid the Russian attack of Ukraine. | AFP photo

The Kremlin on Friday said president Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop striking Kyiv for a week — ending Sunday — following a request by his US counterpart Donald Trump.

Trump had said he asked Putin to halt strikes on the Ukrainian capital and the surrounding area due to extreme cold weather.

Moscow, meanwhile, said the US leader had made the appeal in order to help the Washington-driven negotiation process to end almost four years of war between the neighbours.

Russia’s battering of Ukraine’s energy grid has left whole districts without heating, with temperatures expected to plunge to around -30C in Kyiv in the coming days, raising fears of a humanitarian crisis.

‘I can say that president Trump did indeed make a personal request to president Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Neither the US leader nor Moscow clarified when Trump had asked Putin.

‘I personally asked president Putin not to fire into Kyiv and the various towns for a week,’ Trump told a cabinet meeting at the White House a day earlier, adding it was ‘because of the cold, extreme cold.’

This week, Ukraine has not reported the usual large-scale barrage of drones and missiles that Russia has launched at Kyiv throughout the war.

‘There were no strikes on energy facilities last night,’ Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media Friday.

He added, however: ‘But yesterday afternoon our energy infrastructure in several regions was hit.’

Zelensky had earlier welcomed Trump’s announcement.

‘If Russia does not strike our energy infrastructure — generation facilities or any other energy assets — we will not strike theirs,’ he told journalists, including AFP, in comments released Friday.

Still, Ukraine’s air force said Moscow launched dozens of drones and a missile at Ukraine at night.

The attacks damaged civilian infrastructure in the northern Chernigiv region and a residential building in the southern Zaporizhzhia region, officials said.

The worst of the cold spell in Kyiv is due to come after February 1, with Ukraine’s weather agency warning temperatures could dip to as low as minus 30C in the coming days.

Trump had said he had appealed to Putin ‘because of the cold, extreme cold.’

The Kremlin has been silent on Ukrainians left in the freezing cold amid warnings of a humanitarian crisis and has in the past blamed their suffering on Kyiv.

The pause in Russian strikes, due to end this weekend, comes before Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meeting for a second round of talks in Abu Dhabi.

This round of talks is expected to focus on the key unresolved issue of territory.

Moscow occupies large swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine and demands that Kyiv pull out of the parts of the Donetsk region that it controls — which Ukraine sees as unacceptable.

No breakthrough has been made on the issue.

‘So far, we have been unable to find a compromise on the territorial issue, specifically regarding part of eastern Ukraine,’ Zelensky told journalists.

He added: ‘We have repeatedly said that we are ready for compromises that lead to a real end to the war, but that are in no way related to changes to Ukraine’s territorial integrity.’

Putin has repeatedly said Russia intends to seize the rest of eastern Ukraine by force if diplomacy fails.

Moscow on Friday announced it had captured another three villages in the southern Zaporizhzhia region.

Zelensky also accused Moscow of halting prisoner swaps — one of the last remaining areas of cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv during the war.

‘They are not particularly interested in exchanging people, because they do not feel that it gives them anything,’ the Ukrainian leader said.​

 

[Saif]

Russia's Medvedev says victory will come soon in Ukraine war

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s powerful Security Council, said that Russia will “soon” win military victory in the Ukraine war but the key thing was to prevent any further conflict. “Soon,” Medvedev, who served as Russian president from 2008 to 2012, sai

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Russia's Medvedev says victory will come soon in Ukraine war

REUTERS
Published :
Feb 01, 2026 19:47
Updated :
Feb 01, 2026 19:47

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev attends an interview with Reuters, TASS and WarGonzo in the Moscow region, Russia Jan 29, 2026. Photo : Dmitry Medvedev's Secretariat/Handout via REUTERS

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s powerful Security Council, said that Russia will “soon” win military victory in the Ukraine war but the key thing was to prevent any further conflict.

“Soon,” Medvedev, who served as Russian president from 2008 to 2012, said, when asked by the WarGonzo Russian war blogger in an interview when Russia would win the war. “I would like this to happen as soon as possible.”

“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,” Medvedev said in the interview with TASS, WarGonzo and Reuters.​