These are the key developments from day 1,417 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Sunday, January 11:
Fighting:
- Russian forces launched artillery and drone attacks on Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region on Saturday, killing a 68-year-old man, wounding three others and causing fires to break out in residential buildings, according to Ukraine’s emergency service.
- Russian shelling also killed another person in the Kramatorsk district of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the service said.
- Three other Ukrainians were killed, and nine more were wounded, in Russian attacks on the areas of Yarova, Kostyanynivka and Sloviansk in Donetsk, according to Governor Vadym Filashkin.
- Ukraine’s General Staff reported 139 combat clashes on Saturday and said that Russia launched 33 air strikes, deployed more than 4,430 drones and carried out 2,830 attacks on Ukrainian troops and settlements.
- Russian forces advanced near the villages of Markove and Kleban-Byk in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, according to the Ukrainian battlefield monitoring site DeepState, but no other major changes were reported.
- In the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, engineers are working “around the clock” to restore electricity to residents after thousands of apartments lost power during Russia’s Thursday attacks, said Tymur Tkachenko, the head of the city’s military administration.
- Heat supplies have been returned to roughly half the homes that lost power, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko added.
- Russia’s TASS news agency reported that two people were wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack on the southwestern Russian city of Voronezh.
- The governor of Russia’s Belgorod region, which borders Ukraine, said on Saturday that 600,000 people in the area were without electricity, heating and water after a Ukrainian missile strike.
- Ukrainian forces also carried out a drone strike on Russia’s Volgograd region, sparking a fire at an oil depot in the Oktyabrsky district, regional authorities said.
- The Ukrainian military said on Saturday it had struck the Zhutovskaya oil depot in Volgograd overnight.
- Russian air defence systems, meanwhile, intercepted and destroyed 33 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the agency reported.
Politics and diplomacy
- The United Nations Security Council will host an emergency meeting on January 12 to “address Russia’s flagrant breaches of the UN Charter”, after Russia fired an Oreshnik hypersonic missile near the Polish border, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.
- The foreign minister also spoke out about the antigovernment protests rocking Iran, saying that “Iran’s support for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine and its oppression of its own citizens are part of the same policy of violence and disrespect for human dignity”.
- The deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, insisted that Russia will not accept European or NATO troops in Ukraine and that “European dimwits want a war in Europe after all”.
- “Well, come on then. This is what you’ll get”, the deputy chairman added, accompanied by a video of the Oreshnik strike.
- The Institute for the Study of War wrote in its latest report that Russia’s Oreshnik strike was likely “aimed to scare Western countries from providing military support to Ukraine, particularly from deploying forces to Ukraine as part of a peace agreement”.
- Ukraine’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, “once again reached out to our American partners”, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram. “We continue communication with the American side practically every day,” he said.
- South Africa kicked off a week of naval drills, also attended by Russia, Iran and China.
- Captain Nndwakhulu Thomas Thamaha, South Africa’s joint task force commander, told the opening ceremony that the drills are “a demonstration of our collective resolve to work together”.
Sanctions
- Zelenskyy pledged on X that “we will continue strengthening the sanctions toolkit” and that “all lines of pressure on Russia and individuals associated with it must be maintained”.
- In reference to recent news that US President Donald Trump has greenlit a bill to sanction countries that buy Russian oil, Zelenskyy said: “What is important is that the US Congress is back in motion on tougher sanctions against Russia – targeting Russian oil. This can truly work.”
Energy
- Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said Russian oil products have “significantly increased” after Bloomberg reported that Russian refined fuel flows hit a four-month high in December, driven by stronger diesel shipments from ports in the Baltic Sea. Dmitriev added on X that “fake warmonger narratives are bad for decision-making”.
- Separately, Bloomberg also reported that Russia’s crude oil production dropped to its lowest level in a year and a half in December, hitting 9.32 million barrels per day.
