These are the key developments from day 1,437 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Here is where things stand on Saturday, January 31:
Energy crisis
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly video address on Friday that both Ukraine and Russia had begun a weeklong pause in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure amid plummeting winter temperatures.
- “In all our regions, from Friday night, there were indeed no strikes on energy facilities. Almost none. Except for the Donetsk region, where there was one strike on gas infrastructure – an aerial bomb hit,” he said.
- Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that Moscow had only agreed to pause the attacks until Sunday.
- “President [Donald] Trump did indeed make a personal request to President [Vladimir] Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations,” Peskov said.
- Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram that 253 apartment buildings remain without heating in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, with temperatures falling to as low as -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight this week.
Fighting
- Russian forces attacked a minibus carrying passengers in Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing the 48-year-old driver and injuring five people, two of whom were in serious condition, the region’s Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on the Telegram messaging app.
- Prokudin earlier said that three people were killed in Russian drone, missile and artillery attacks across Kherson over the past day.
- Russian forces killed a 47-year-old woman and injured another 52-year-old woman in an attack near the village of Novoosinove, in Ukraine’s Kherson region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said on Telegram.
- Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces fired an Iskander-M ballistic missile and launched 111 drones towards Ukraine overnight and into Friday morning. About 80 drones were shot down by Ukrainian forces, the ministry said.
- Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that Russian forces had launched seven attacks on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure within the previous 24 hours.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that Russian forces seized the Ukrainian village of Ternuvate in the Zaporizhia region. Russian state media also reported that Russian forces seized Richne in Zaporizhia and Berestok in the eastern Donetsk region.
- Ukrainian battlefield monitoring site DeepState said that Russian forces occupied Zlahoda in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region and advanced near Hrabovske in the Sumy region, and Yehorivka in the Zaporizhia region.
Politics and diplomacy
- President Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that he invited President Putin to Kyiv for talks, “if he dares”, adding that he was ready for any format for the meeting, but that he would not go to Moscow or Belarus.
- Russian lawmakers want Moscow to use more powerful weapons to achieve its war goals in Ukraine, the speaker of parliament’s lower chamber, the State Duma, said on Friday.
- Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram: “State Duma deputies insist on the use of more powerful weapons – ‘weapons of retribution’. And the achievement of the goals of the special military operation.”
- The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would use “all available means” to defend vessels sailing under Russian flags after a suspected Russian “shadow fleet” oil tanker – “the Grinch” – was recently intercepted by the French navy at sea and taken to the Marseille-Fos port in the south of France.
- The European Union has blacklisted Russia over the risk of money laundering, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told reporters on Friday. “This will slow down and increase the costs of transactions with Russian banks,” she said.
