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At least 36 people were injured according to a tally of updates by Ukrainian authorities
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A mother and child are among at least six people killed in Russian attacks over the past day, Ukrainian authorities said.
The 10-year-old boy and his mother, 41, were killed in the town of Bohodukhiv in the eastern Kharkiv region, after Moscow launched a wave of attacks targeting the country’s east and south.
A “massive” Russian drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa killed one and injured two others, regional governor Oleh Kiper said, while a 71-year-old man was killed in an attack on Novhorod-Siverskyi in the northern Chernihiv region.
On Sunday morning, two more people were killed in Russian attacks on the city of Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region and Oleksiievo-Druzhkivka.
A total of 36 people were injured across Ukraine over the past day, according to a tally of updates by Ukrainian authorities.
Meanwhile, a man suspected of shooting a top military intelligence officer in Moscow has been detained, according to Russia’s security service.
Lieutenant General Vladimir Alexeyev – an official previously linked to the Salisbury poisonings – was shot several times outside an apartment building in an alleged assassination attempt. He is currently recovering in hospital after undergoing surgery.
Ukraine is set to launch drone production in Germany by mid-February, president Volodymyr Zelensky has said.
In a post on X, he wrote: “Today, we are opening exports. Ten export centers across Europe will be operating as early as 2026 – in the Baltic and Nordic states. Ten representative offices will be active in 2026.
“By mid-February, we will already see the production of our drones in Germany.”
Ukrainian and Russian leaders need to meet in person to hash out the hardest remaining issues in peace talks, Kyiv’s foreign minister has said, adding that only US president Donald Trump has the power to bring about an agreement.
“Only Trump can stop the war,” Sybiha told Reuters in his office in Kyiv, close to the Dnipro river.
From a 20-point peace plan that has formed the basis of recent trilateral negotiations, only “a few” items remain outstanding, Sybiha said.
“The most sensitive and most difficult, to be dealt with at the leaders’ level.”
Sybiha said Ukraine wants to accelerate the efforts to end the four-yer-old war and capitalise on the momentum in the US-brokered talks before other factors come into play, such as campaigning for the US Congressional mid-term elections in November.
Russian forces have attacked an energy facility in Ukraine’s northwestern Volyn region, Novovolynsk mayor Borys Karpus said.
“The enemy struck an energy facility near the Novovolynsk hromada [settlement] again last night,” Mr Karpus said in a post on Facebook.
Water is being supplied via the electricity network, he said. Wastewater treatment plants are requiring generators to function, and some boiler houses have also switched to generator power.
He added: “The boilers are being fired up. Fuel is available. All the appropriate services have been deployed. The situation is under control.”
This year’s Winter Olympics, which officially kick off on 6 February in Milan, will feature athletes from 92 different countries.
But two will be conspicuous by their absence: Russia and Belarus.
Both countries were suspended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2023 for violating the Olympic Charter, meaning they cannot compete at the Winter Olympics.
That ban remains in place but some individual athletes from those countries are allowed to participate in Milano-Cortina, albeit under a neutral flag.
Read more here:
Russian forces are trying to press forward around the city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s military said on Monday, hoping to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic hub as Moscow seeks to capture the whole of the Donetsk region.
Ukraine has struggled to halt slow Russian advances around Pokrovsk and elsewhere along the 1,200-km (746-mile) front line while it comes under U.S. pressure to reach a peace deal to end the four-year war in ongoing talks.
Kyiv’s General Staff said on Monday its forces still held the northern part of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of 60,000, and were also defending the smaller city of Myrnohrad nearby.
Pokrovsk, a railway nexus, has been the site of fierce fighting since last year. Its fall would mark Russia’s biggest battlefield victory since it seized the eastern city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
Moscow claimed late last year to have captured Pokrovsk, which Kyiv denied.
Russian attacks damaged production sites of Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas company Naftogaz in the Poltava and Sumy regions, the company’s CEO said on Monday.
The facilities in the Poltava region came under attack for a second day in a row, Sergii Koretskyi said on Facebook, adding it was the 20th attack on the company’s infrastructure since the start of the year.
Vitalii Klitschko is now speaking about the intentions of Russian president Vladimir Putin – and says his army would not have stopped with Ukraine if it weren’t stopped by the Ukrainian army.
“That’s why my message is that only together, we can stop Putin. Because Putin would go so far as far we allow him to go,” he said.
“Ukraine, if we were not successful, definitely Putin [would] never [have] stopped in Ukraine,” he says, adding that he would have gone “as far” as he was allowed to go.
Vitalii Klitschko has said that around 600,000 Ukrainian refugees have moved to Kyiv from war-town regions of Ukraine.
He said the capital is “protected from air defence better than the other cities”.
“Second point, we provide the best services, medical care, education, a whole spectrum of services [which] is very important.”
Vitalii Klitschko has now been asked about political animosity between himself and Volodymyr Zelensky, of whom he has previously been critical.
He says that he has a “not easy relationship” between the local government and central government. This is not exclusive to Kyiv, he says – it is an “opinion from many mayors”.
Mr Klitschko adds: “Unity inside the country, without political games, makes us much stronger.
“Political competition, we have a lot of examples [of it] during the war, it’s not smart.
“The president criticised [the Kyiv administration] that we were not good prepared [for war]. I’m sorry, I’m not responsible for air defense. We do everything that we can.
“Who is guilty, the local government, the central government? The company that delivers energy? We are fighting against each other, but nobody will look at Putin.
“Putin destroyed I told the president, please don’t follow the agenda of Putin. We have to be united.”
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