Ukraine has been through a difficult week. While intense battles continue to rage along the front lines, daily Russian drone and missile attacks bring death and destruction to rear areas.
A heavy Russian drone attack on Odesa overnight on Tuesday killed four people and injured 24 others. The strike ravaged an energy facility, damaged apartment buildings, a church, kindergarten and a school. A Russian drone strike on a passenger train in Kharkiv region on Tuesday killed six people. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi called the attack “an act of terrorism.” Russia launched 146 drones and a ballistic missile at Ukraine overnight on Wednesday, targeting Kyiv and the surrounding region as well as the cities of Odesa, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporizhzhia. One of the drones struck an apartment building in Bilohorodka on the outskirts of Kyiv, killing two people.
The next round of trilateral talks between Ukraine, Russia and the U.S. are set to take place in Abu Dhabi on February 1. The Kremlin offers no indication of willingness to compromise ahead of a new round of negotiations, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) concluded. The Financial Times said Tuesday that U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine are contingent on Kyiv first agreeing a peace deal that would likely involve ceding Donetsk region to Russia. The White House has denied the claim. Pushing Ukraine to give up the territory would be a strategic mistake, ISW said.
As of Friday morning, 378 apartment buildings in Kyiv were still without heating [after Russian attacks], Kyiv State City Administration said. In the first days of February, temperatures are expected to drop to between minus -20 and -27 degrees Celsius across Ukraine with temperatures in some parts of the country projected to reach minus -30 degrees Celsius, the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center said.
Trump says he asked Putin not to strike Kyiv, other cities for a week.
U.S. President Donald Trump has claimed that Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for one week after he issued a personal appeal to the Russian leader due to the extreme cold in Ukraine.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this. It’s extraordinary. It’s not just like cold. It’s extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday. “A lot of people said don’t waste the call, you’re not going to get that. And he did it and we’re very happy that they did it,” he added.
Commenting on the news, the Financial Times’ Ukraine correspondent Christopher Miller said on X Thursday: “Ukrainian officials tell me they learned of this from Trump’s remarks, have not received a signal from Russia and are not yet certain that a ceasefire is in place.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyi thanked Trump for his efforts to secure a pause in attacks. “An important statement by POTUS [U.S. President Donald Trump] about the possibility of providing security for Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities during this extreme winter period. Power supply is a foundation of life. We value the efforts of our partners to help us protect lives. Thank you, President Trump! Our teams discussed this in the United Arab Emirates. We expect the agreements to be implemented. De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war,” he said in a post to X Thursday.