A Russian drone attack on a mining facility in the region of Dnipro kills 12, injures 16 others. A majority of Ukrainians reject ceding all of Donbas to Russia in exchange for security guarantees, a poll finds. Ukraine is running short of missiles for air defense systems, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force says.
Russian drone attack on mining facility in region of Dnipro kills 12, injures 16 others
Russia carried out a drone attack on the city of Ternivka in the region of Dnipro on Sunday. One of the drones hit near a bus carrying mine workers, killing 12 people and injuring 16 others.
DTEK, Ukraine’s private energy company, said those killed were travelling from one of its mining facilities after they had finished their shift. “Russia launched a large-scale terrorist attack on DTEK’s coal mines in the region of Dnipro. The epicenter of one of the attacks was a company bus in the region of Dnipro transporting miners from an enterprise after a shift,” the company said.
As of Sunday evening, 14 people remained in hospital, of which seven were in grave condition, head of the Dnipro regional military administration Oleksandr Hanzha said.
Adviser on defense technology to Ukraine’s Defense Minister, Serhiy Beskrestnov who goes by the call sign “Flash” said drone operators from the Russian territory 100 percent saw and recognized the target as civilian, and made a conscious decision to attack. The bus was hit by Shahed drones controlled in real time, he added.
“The first Shahed drone struck near the bus. The shock wave caused the driver to lose control and hit a fence. As the passengers began to exit the bus, helping each other, an operator of the second Shahed drone saw the people and directed a Shahed directly at the civilians,” Beskrestnov said in a post to Facebook Sunday.
Reacting to the Russian attack, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiha said in a post to X on Sunday: “No military target—just hardworking men returning to their families after their shifts. Truly horrific. Russia once again proves its status of a terrorist state. Russian murderers responsible for this and other atrocities must face justice. Accountability is essential for a just peace.”
Majority of Ukrainians reject ceding all of Donbas to Russia in exchange for security guarantees, poll finds
A majority of Ukrainians (52 per cent) firmly reject ceding all of Donbas to Russia in exchange for security guarantees, a survey conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology between January 23 and January 29 found. Nine per cent say they would easily agree to the arrangement, while 31 per cent would accept it as a difficult compromise.
The shares remain largely unchanged since mid-last month, the pollster said.
“We would like to particularly note that 59 per cent of Kyiv residents deemed the deal as totally unacceptable. Thirty-one per cent were ready to accept it. This means that despite a difficult situation in the capital, a majority of the residents reject [the deal],” the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said in a press statement accompanying the survey results.
Those views were largely uniform across the regions with 57 per cent rejecting the deal and 38 per cent ready to accept it in the west of the country, 49 per cent and 42 per cent respectively in the center and in the north, 49 per cent and 44 per cent in the south, 50 per cent and 39 per cent in the east.
Eighty-eight per cent of Ukrainians say that Russian attacks on the country’s energy facilities are meant to cut the Ukrainians off from power and heat, and force them into capitulation. Only nine per cent of Ukrainians say they had to move to a different place or home since autumn 2025 because of the problems with heating or electricity. Six per cent of this share have since returned back.
Commenting on the survey’s results, executive director of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Anton Hrushetskyi said: “As of late January 2026, Russia’s campaign of large-scale strikes on Ukrainian energy sites and its efforts to plunge the country into darkness and cold did not have a significant impact on public moods. We do not observe an increase in support for the ‘peace on any terms’ statement (notably, we do not observe it in the capital, which was a target of Russian strikes in January). On the contrary, we see a majority of the population staying willing to continue resistance. A majority of Ukrainians also support Ukraine striking inside Russia.”
The survey was conducted through computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI), using a random sample of cell phone numbers. The total sample of the poll consists of 1,003 Ukrainians ages 18 and older who live in government-controlled Ukrainian territory.
The margin of error at the 95 percent confidence level with a design effect of 1.3 would not exceed 4.1 percentage points. On top of that, in times of war, the figure adds a systematic deviation, the pollster said.
Ukraine running short of missiles for air defense systems, spokesperson for Ukraine’s air force says
Ukraine is running short of missiles for its air defense systems. Sometimes the shortages are critical in the face of Russian attacks, Head of the Communications Directorate for Ukraine’s Air Force Command, Colonel Yuriy Ihnat said in an interview with RBC Ukraine published on Monday.
“[We] have been making statements and the Ukrainian president has been informing partners that sometimes some of the [air defense] systems stand empty, while we need to fend off another attack. We had [missiles] supplied to us a day ahead of one of the attacks. Ukraine’s defense forces repelled that major air attack quite successfully thanks to the missiles for the F-16s, NASAMS, Iris-Ts and the Patriots,” Ihnat said.
He said there were times when the Air Force had serious shortages of the missiles. During one of the Russian attacks a NASAMS system had just two instead of six missiles.
Russia uses large numbers of missiles and drones, sapping Ukraine’s air defenses.
“The attacks are different from the ones in the previous years by the fact that the enemy uses large numbers of [missiles and drones] to simultaneously and intensely attack a city or a region. Sometimes there’s not enough time to recharge our air defense missile systems, like NASAMS or Iris-T, during such heavy attacks,” he said.