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[🇺🇦] Monitoring Russian and Ukraine War.

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Russia fired 42 missiles, 123 drones at Ukraine
Agence France-Presse . Kyiv, Ukraine 01 February, 2025, 22:43

Russia fired 42 missiles and 123 drones including decoys at Ukraine overnight in a barrage that damaged buildings and left several people dead, the Ukrainian air force said on Saturday.

‘On the night of February 1, 2025, the Russian invaders launched a combined attack on Ukraine with missiles of various types,’ the air force said, listing 42 missiles including cruise, ballistic and guided varieties.

The UN condemned a Russian missile attack on the city of Odesa in southern Ukraine that wounded at least seven people and damaged historic buildings.

The Black Sea port, known for its picturesque streets of 19th-century buildings, is regularly targeted by Russian strikes.

‘UNESCO condemns the missile attack on the historic centre of Odesa last night, a World Heritage site, severely damaging at least two cultural buildings placed under UNESCO Conventions’ protection,’ the UN agency said.

‘Our team is already at work to promptly support the urgent documentation of damage and identify with the Ukrainian authorities the required emergency interventions,’ it said, adding that a UNESCO mission will be deployed to Odesa.

Regional governor Oleg Kiper wrote on social media that ‘seven people are known to have been injured in the attack by Russian terrorists on the historical centre of Odesa.’

Kiper said in earlier posts that two women and a child were among the wounded.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky condemned what he called an ‘absolutely deliberate attack by Russian terrorists’, saying it was fortunate there were no deaths.

Kiper posted photos showing rescuers wheeling a woman on a stretcher outside the city’s historic Hotel Bristol. The photos show damage to the 19th-century hotel’s ornate facade and interior, including a grand staircase.

Ukraine’s emergency service posted video showing debris littering the street outside the Bristol and a woman with dust on her clothes being helped by rescuers.

It said firefighters had rescued a woman trapped in one room and extinguished a fire on the roof.

‘Among the people who were at the epicentre of the attack were Norwegian diplomatic representatives,’ Zelensky said.

‘There is a lot of damage and destruction in the UNESCO-protected area,’ Odesa’s mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov said.

Odesa’s historic centre is on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Its Transfiguration Cathedral — destroyed by the Soviets and rebuilt in the 2000s — was badly damaged by a Russian strike in July 2023.

‘As a result of the explosions, a number of historical monuments, including the Literary, Historical and Local Lore, Archaeological Museums, Museum of Western and Eastern Art, and the Philharmonic, have had their windows smashed and their facades damaged,’ Kiper said.

Ukrainian media posted photos showing what appeared to be a large crater near the hotel, and fallen masonry, blown-out windows and debris littering the floor inside.

Russian military bloggers alleged that foreign military specialists were staying in the hotel.​
 

US wants Ukraine to hold elections following a ceasefire, says Trump envoy
REUTERS
Published :
Feb 01, 2025 21:50
Updated :
Feb 01, 2025 21:50

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US President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet at Trump Tower in New York City, US, September 27, 2024. Photo : REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/Files

The United States wants Ukraine to hold elections, potentially by the end of the year, especially if Kyiv can agree a truce with Russia in the coming months, President Donald Trump’s top Ukraine official told Reuters.

Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, said in an interview that Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections, suspended during the war with Russia, “need to be done”.

“Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” Kellogg said. “I think it is good for democracy. That’s the beauty of a solid democracy, you have more than one person potentially running.”

Trump and Kellogg have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end the all-out war that erupted with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

They have offered few details about their strategy for ending the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two, nor when they might unveil such a plan.

The Trump plan is still evolving and no policy decisions have been made, but Kellogg and other White House officials have discussed in recent days pushing Ukraine to agree to elections as part of an initial truce with Russia, two people with knowledge of those conversations and a former U.S. official briefed about the election proposal said.

Trump officials are also debating whether to push for an initial ceasefire before trying to broker a more permanent deal, the two people familiar with the Trump administration discussions said. If presidential elections were to take place in Ukraine, the winner could be responsible for negotiating a longer-term pact with Moscow, the people said.

The sources declined to be named in order to discuss sensitive policy and security issues.

It is unclear how such a Trump proposal would be greeted in Kyiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said Ukraine could hold elections this year if the fighting ends and strong security guarantees are in place to deter Russia from renewing hostilities.

A senior adviser to Kyiv and a Ukrainian government source said the Trump administration has not yet formally requested Ukraine hold presidential elections by the end of the year.

SETTING A TRAP

Zelenskiy’s five-year term was supposed to end in 2024 but presidential and parliamentary polls cannot be held under martial law, which Ukraine imposed in February 2022.

Washington raised the issue of elections with senior officials in Zelenskiy’s office in 2023 and 2024 during the Biden administration, two former senior US officials said.

State Department and White House officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that elections were critical to uphold international and democratic norms, the officials said.

Officials in Kyiv have pushed back on elections in conversations with Washington in recent months, telling Biden officials that hosting polls at such a volatile moment in Ukraine’s history would divide Ukrainian leaders and potentially invite Russian influence campaigns, the two former US officials said.

Asked about what the former Western official and two other people familiar with the matter told Reuters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “We do not have that information.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was cited by the Interfax news agency on Jan 27 as saying that direct contacts between Moscow and the Trump administration were not yet underway. The Russian Foreign Ministry says it is still waiting for the US to approve its new pick as Moscow’s ambassador in Washington, a post currently unoccupied.

Putin has said publicly he does not think Zelenskiy is a legitimate leader in the absence of a renewed electoral mandate and that the Ukrainian president does not have the legal right to sign binding documents related to a potential peace deal.

According to the Russian leader, however, Zelenskiy could take part in negotiations in the meantime but must first revoke a 2022 decree he signed banning talks with Russia for as long as Putin is in charge.

The Ukrainian government source said Putin was using the election issue as a false excuse to disrupt future negotiations.

“(He) is setting a trap, claiming that if Ukraine doesn’t hold elections, he can later ignore any agreements,” the source said.

RUSSIA’S BIDDING?

Ukrainian legislation explicitly prohibits presidential and parliamentary elections being held under martial law.

The former Western official raised concerns about the US push for elections, saying lifting martial law could allow mobilized soldiers to leave the military, trigger an exodus of hard currency and prompt large numbers of draft-age men to “run for the border”.

It could also ignite political instability, the source said, because it would make Zelenskiy a lame duck, diluting his power and influence and fueling jockeying by potential challengers.

If Trump pressures Zelenskiy to agree to elections, Washington would be playing into Putin’s recent statements questioning the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy, the former Western official said.

“Trump is reacting, in my view, to ... Russian feedback,” the official said. “Russia wants to see an end to Zelenskiy.”

Some former US officials say they are skeptical that a peace deal can be reached in the coming months or that elections would take place in 2025, particularly because both sides appear to be at odds on how to begin formal negotiations.

The Kremlin has said repeatedly that Putin is open to talks without preconditions.

But William Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, said Putin has shown no readiness for serious negotiations.

Zelenskiy is seeking US and European security guarantees as part of any deal, including the deployment of a foreign military force on the frontlines to ensure Russia abides by any truce.​
 

Russian air attack kills four in Ukraine, Kyiv says
REUTERS
Published :
Feb 01, 2025 16:40
Updated :
Feb 01, 2025 16:40

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Rescuers work at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian missile strike, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Poltava, Ukraine February 1, 2025. Photo : Press service of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Poltava region/Handout via REUTERS

Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles on Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least four civilians and damaging residential buildings and infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said.

The Interior Ministry said that a Russian missile slammed into a residential building in the central city of Poltava, killing three people and injuring 10, including a child.

The ministry posted pictures on the Telegram messaging app showing the residential building with several top floors smashed and thick columns of smoke rising into the sky. Fire brigades and dozens of rescuers were going through the rubble.

One person was killed and four were wounded in the city of Kharkiv in the northeast as the result of a drone attack, the Kharkiv mayor said.

Officials said that the Russian forces also damaged buildings in the city of Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine.

Ukrainian air defence was also repelling the attacks in Kyiv, but there were no immediate reports of major damage or casualties in the capital, they said.

"Russia's daily attacks on Ukraine are a signal that the aggressor will not stop committing its crimes," Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said on Telegram.

"Last night and in the morning, Russia shelled Ukraine again: Odesa, Poltava, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia... The terrorist targets civilian infrastructure: residential buildings, educational institutions, cars."

As the war against Russia approaches its three-year mark this month, Moscow has stepped up its air attacks on Ukraine, sending dozens of drones in almost daily attacks.

The strikes in the morning hours on Saturday followed a Russian missile attack on the southern Black Sea port of Odesa the previous evening which damaged the city's historic centre.​
 

Russia, Ukraine trade blame for missile strike
Four killed; 84 people receive medical assistance

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Ukraine and Russia traded blame for a deadly missile strike on Saturday that killed at least four people in the dormitory of a boarding school situated in a part of Russia's Kursk region held by Kyiv forces.

Some of the war's fiercest battles in recent months have been taking place in the Kursk region that borders Ukraine, where Kyiv forces have held swathes of the land since staging a major cross-border incursion last August.

Ukraine's Armed Forces said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia had launched an aerial bomb from Russian territory that struck a boarding school in Sudzha, killing at least four. The boarding school housed people preparing for evacuation.

As of 10:00 pm (2000 GMT) on Saturday, 84 people had been rescued or received medical assistance, the statement said. Four of the injured were in a serious condition. Rescue efforts to clear rubble were proceeding.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the attack on Sudzha, some 12 km (7.5 miles) from the border with Ukraine, showed how Russia fights the war.

"They destroyed the building even though dozens of civilians were there," Zelensky wrote on the X social media platform.

"This is how Russia waged war against Chechnya decades ago. They killed Syrians the same way. Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian homes the same way."

Russia's Defence Ministry said early yesterday on Telegram that Ukrainian forces had launched "a targeted missile strike on a boarding school in the city of Sudzha" from Ukrainian territory.

In a statement, Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova called the strike a "terrorist attack" and vowed to bring Kyiv to justice.​
 

Ukraine strikes major oil, gas facilitites in Russia

UN warns Russian forces killing more captured Ukrainian troops in recent months

Ukraine struck energy facilities in southern Russia with dozens of drones launched yesterday, triggering fires at a major oil refinery and gas processing plant and disrupting flights from the Volga to the Caucasus Mountains, Russian and Ukrainian officials said.

Russia's defence ministry said that its air defence units intercepted and destroyed 70 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight, including 25 over the Volgograd region, 27 over the Rostov region and seven over the Astrakhan region, reports Reuters.

"The air defence forces of the defence ministry repelled a massive attack by aircraft-type drones on the territory of the Volgograd region," Volgograd Governor Andrei Bocharov said.

A pro-Russian paramilitary leader from eastern Ukraine was killed in a Moscow bomb blast.

Falling drone debris sparked several fires at an oil refinery, he said, though he did not say which refinery was on fire.

Since Russia sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, Kyiv has tried to fight back against its much bigger neighbour by striking deep into Russia with drones and missiles, and even killing a senior military commander in Moscow.

In Moscow, a pro-Russian paramilitary leader from eastern Ukraine, Armen Sarkisyan, was killed yesterday when a bomb tore through parts of a luxury apartment block, state news agency TASS and other Russian media reported.

Meanwhile, the United Nations yesterday warned that Russian forces have been killing more captured Ukrainian soldiers over recent months, echoing growing allegations from officials in Kyiv, reports AFP.

Both Moscow and Kyiv have accused the other of committing war crimes, including killing prisoners of war, since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago.

The United Nations monitoring mission in Ukraine said that since the end of August last year it had "recorded 79 such executions in 24 separate incidents" by Russian forces.

"These incidents did not occur in a vacuum. Public figures in the Russian Federation have explicitly called for inhumane treatment, and even execution, of captured Ukrainian military personnel," said Danielle Bell, head of the mission.

Russian forces advanced 430 square kilometres into Ukrainian territory in January and are headed towards the logistics hub of Pokrovsk, according to an AFP analysis of data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

This marks a slight slowdown compared to previous months, after a record advance of 725 square kilometres in November and 476 square kilometres in December.​
 

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