{"id":198559,"date":"2026-01-29T20:07:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:07:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-several-big-mistakes-already-made-by-us-team-in-talks-to-end-war-report-sky-news\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T20:07:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T20:07:04","slug":"ukraine-war-latest-several-big-mistakes-already-made-by-us-team-in-talks-to-end-war-report-sky-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/ukraine-war-latest-several-big-mistakes-already-made-by-us-team-in-talks-to-end-war-report-sky-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukraine war latest: 'Several big mistakes' already made by US team in talks to end war – report – Sky News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Russia is demanding Ukraine cede territory it currently holds as a condition for ending the war. But new analysis shows Moscow’s advances on the battlefield are slower than any army in a century. Follow the latest and catch up on our Q&A with Michael Clarke.
Thursday 29 January 2026 16:42, UK
Thanks for following our live updates on the war in Ukraine today, we’re wrapping up our coverage for now.
Before we go, here’s a summary of the key moments we brought you…
Three killed in Zaporizhzhia strike<\/b>
Ukrainian officials said three people were killed and another has been injured in an overnight Russian strike in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
Governor Ivan Fedorov said drones struck the city of Vilnyansk at around midnight (10pm UK time), killing two women aged 26 and 50 and a 62-year-old man.
The attack came hours after Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned “the Russians are preparing a new massive strike – our intelligence indicates this”.
Images also showed a fire at an industrial facility in the Odesa region after a Russian strike, with storage and production facilities damaged.
Trump envoy making ‘big mistakes’ – report<\/b>
As attention turns towards this weekend’s latest round of trilateral talks, concerns are reportedly growing inside Ukraine’s peace delegation over a senior US envoy with a “shocking” lack of knowledge about the war and geopolitics.
According to the Kyiv Independent<\/b><\/a>, the official, who has not been named, has made several blunders during recent conversations with reporters, including suggesting they did not know when Russia’s war in Ukraine had begun.
It’s also suggested the official incorrectly claimed that Kyrylo Budanov, the recently appointed head of Ukraine’s President’s Office, now serves as the country’s vice president.
They also reportedly said the war in Ukraine has now been going on longer than the Second World War.
Russia’s slow advance<\/b>
Meanwhile, new analysis showed Russia’s army is advancing in Ukraine at the slowest pace seen in more than 100 years of warfare.
After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 metres a day in their most prominent offensives, according to the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies<\/a> (CSIS).
In Moscow’s offensive on Chasiv Yar, which began in February 2024, Putin’s forces have advanced at an average rate of 15 metres a day, data shows.
By comparison, French forces advanced around 80 metres a day during the infamously attritional Battle of the Somme during the First World War.
As attention turns to the Ukraine-Russia-US talks this weekend, one kind of peace is possible under one condition, according to military analyst Michael Clarke<\/a>.
In his weekly Ukraine war Q&A yesterday, Clarke said a specific scenario was required for that kind of peace to be achieved: the Russians need to be pushed back enough for Putin to be interested in peace.
“Then you’ve got the chance to have a genuine pause of maybe a year or two years to try to stabilise the situation for Ukraine,” he said.
In that time, Ukraine’s allies could turn it into “a porcupine”, a heavily armed country that Russia won’t want to take on again.
“That would feel to the Europeans like victory,” said Clarke.
“Where on the map would that be? I would say, well, it depends on how the rest of the world sees it,” Clarke added, recounting Boris Johnson’s phrase that Vladimir Putin needed to fail and be seen to have failed.
Pushback unlikely for the moment<\/b>
Still, the pushback has to happen militarily, and that is unlikely to happen in the first half of this year, according to our military analyst.
Thereafter, it could be more plausible, depending on the weapons Ukraine receives from its allies.
Clarke said the spring of 2026 would be the earliest that either side could actually mount a significant offensive.
But he added: “I’m not predicting it because… I don’t think the Ukrainians can do that and the Russians can either.”
Watch the full Q&A here…
The European Commission has announced it will provide emergency humanitarian aid to Ukraine as attacks on its energy infrastructure continue during the harsh winter.
The package will see \u00a3125m allocated to Ukraine as the country faces its coldest winter during the four years of the war.
The EU said the funds will help provide protection assistance, shelter, food, cash aid and access to water for those affected by Russia’s attacks.
A further \u00a36.9m will be given to Moldova to support Ukrainian refugees.
The bloc has ramped up its support for Ukrainians this week, with more than 400 power generators sent to the country to help restore electricity.
Ukraine’s defence ministry says it’s working with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to resolve the issue of Russian drones using the Starlink internet system.
Defence minster Mykhailo \u200cFedorov said he raised the issue with SpaceX a few hours after Russian drones with Starlink connectivity appeared over Ukrainian cities.
“I am grateful to SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk personally for their quick response and for starting to work on resolving the situation,” he said.
Musk sent the first batch of Starlink terminals to Ukraine at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in 2022, a decision Fedorov said was “critical to the stability of our state”.
“Western technology must continue to help the democratic world and protect civilians, rather than being used to terrorise and destroy peaceful cities,” he added.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) says it’s detained a soldier from the Ukrainian navy who was allegedly acting as a Russian informant and collecting data on naval drones.
The spy, who worked in the navy’s unmanned systems brigade, targeted the Sea Baby and Magura drones used by the SBU and Ukrainian military intelligence, the report added.
The soldier reportedly began cooperating with Russian intelligence through acquaintances, sharing sensitive details such as the locations of personnel operating the maritime drones and the coordinates of the drones’ storage sites.
The man is in custody, and the investigation is ongoing, the SBU said.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Ukraine has “significantly diversified” its oil and gas supply channels following multiple Russian attacks on its energy infrastructure.
As we’ve been reporting, Ukrainians have been battling with power cuts during what’s been a particularly cold winter, with many people in different areas of the country forced to go days on end without heating, electricity and water.
“We are \u200censuring a reliable gas \u200bsupply for Ukrainians despite all ‍challenges,” Zelenskyy says. “We continue to \u200cimport sufficient volumes. \u2060Supply routes \u200chave been ‍significantly diversified.” 
Some 613 high-rise blocks of flats in Kyiv remain without heating following recent Russian strikes, the city’s state administration says.
Heating was restored to 124 buildings over the past day, it said.
City officials are continuing efforts to restore heating after the Russian strikes on 9 January and 20 January, which have left some residents without heating for nearly three weeks.
After a brief warming at the end of January, colder weather is forecast to return to Ukraine next week, with daytime temperatures expected to fall to -15C.
Vladimir Putin \u200chas told his UAE counterpart that Russia \u2060is closely monitoring the situation in Iran and wants \u200bto discuss it \u200bwith him further in Kremlin talks. 
Putin made the ‍comment at the start of talks with Mohammed \u200bbin Zayed al Nahyan, whose \u200ccountry has recently hosted peace talks \u200cbetween Russia and Ukraine. 
Earlier today, Kremlin \u200bspokesman Dmitry Peskov said any use of force against Tehran could \u200ccreate “chaos” in the \u2060region and lead to \u200cdangerous consequences. 
Peskov was commenting a ‍day after Donald Trump urged Iran to come to the table and make a deal on \u200bnuclear weapons or face a possible US attack. 
Russia’s foreign minster says he’s not aware of any security guarantees agreed upon by the US and Ukraine but questioned their potential viability, according to state media.
Sergei Lavrov was quoted as saying \u200cthat any \u2060guarantees that attempted \u200cto preserve the ‍existing “regime” in Kyiv and use it as a “springboard for \u200bthreatening Russia” were unlikely to ensure a reliable ‍peace. 
For context: <\/b>Ukraine \u200cis seeking security guarantees of \u200bits future protection as part of a ‍deal to end the war. 
Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously said such a deal was “100%” complete, but reports in recent days have suggested that the US is waiting for Ukraine to agree to a wider peace deal before it confirms the guarantees.
In our latest Q&A with military analyst Michael Clarke<\/a>, he was asked how Ukrainians were surviving the harsh weather and if attacks on the energy infrastructure amounted to a war crime.
Temperatures in Ukraine have dropped as low as -20C this winter, with national forecaster Ukrgidromettsentr predicting another cold snap will intensify next week.
At the same time, Moscow has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, cutting off heating, electricity and water in different parts of the country, sometimes for days on end.
Clarke said whether it constituted a war crime depended on the intention.
“In other words, it’s automatically a war crime to try to make civilians suffer in a war,” he said.
“It’s a war crime if the intention is anti-civilian, which in this case it certainly is, I don’t think the Russians could possibly defend themselves on the basis that this was in any way military related.”
Our security and defence editor Deborah Haynes<\/a> spoke to families in Kyiv this week who are struggling in the harshest conditions….
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Russia is demanding Ukraine cede territory it currently holds as a condition for ending the war. But new analysis shows Moscow’s advances on the battlefield are slower than any army in a century. Follow the latest and catch up on our Q&A with Michael Clarke.Thursday 29 January 2026 16:42, UKThanks for following our live updates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":198560,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-198559","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198559\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}