Russian forces are trying to press forward and capture the key strategic city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine, Kyiv‘s military said.
Vladimir Putin’s troops are aiming to conclude a months-long campaign to seize the strategic railway hub and capture the whole of the Donetsk region while his negotiators stall peace talks.
The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces still held the northern part of Pokrovsk, a city with a pre-war population of 60,000, and were also defending the smaller city of Myrnohrad nearby.
But Ukrainian open-source researchers DeepState said Russian infantry were moving into the northern part of Pokrovsk and attempting to push further toward the nearby village of Hryshyne.
The group, whose map showed nearly all of Pokrovsk and much of Myrnohrad to be under Russian control, described the current fighting as “the last battles” for the two cities.
The battlefield update comes as the Russian aerial onslaught of missiles and drones continued over Ukraine, killing a mother and child among six people over the past day.
The 10-year-old boy and his mother, 41, were killed in the town of Bohodukhiv in the eastern Kharkiv region, after Moscow launched a wave of attacks targeting the country’s east and south.
Russia’s Lavrov accuses Trump of backtracking on Alaska agreement
Russia has accused the Donald Trump administration of not implementing the agreements between Vladimir Putin and the US president in Alaska.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said the US had backtracked on what he called the “Anchorage agreements” between Trump and Putin during their meeting in August last year.
He suggested the US had told Russia it could get Ukraine to give up the whole of the Donbas region in order to end the fighting – something Kyiv had previously ruled out.
“They tell us that the Ukrainian issue needs to be resolved. In Anchorage, we accepted the proposal of the US,” Lavrov told Russian TB Brics yesterday.
“They made an offer, we agreed, and the problem should have been resolved. It seems that they proposed it and we were ready – and now they are not.”
The senior Russian minister said that despite declarations of moving toward a “full-scale, broad cooperation”, the US is pursuing an “anti-Russian policy”.
Pointing to new sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers, Lavrov said: “In practice, everything looks the opposite: new sanctions are being introduced, and a war against (shadow fleet) tankers is being waged on the high seas.”
Senior Russian diplomat: No one talks about security guarantees for us
An agreement to settle the nearly four-year-old conflict between Russia and Ukraine must also take into consideration security guarantees for Russia, a senior Russian diplomat was quoted as saying.
“We recognise that a peace settlement in Ukraine must take account of Ukraine’s security interests, but a key factor, of course, is Russia’s security interests,” deputy Russian foreign minister Alexander Grushko told the Izvestia media outlet.
“If you look carefully and study the statements made by the leaders of the European Union, no one talks about security guarantees for Russia. This is a key element of a peace accord. Without it, an agreement is impossible.”
Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have held two rounds of talks in recent weeks with US representatives in the United Arab Emirates. No peace deal has emerged, but the two sides agreed at their latest meeting last week on the first exchange of prisoners of war in five months.
Security guarantees for Ukraine have been a focal point of discussions, along with the extent of Russia’s control of Ukrainian territory and plans for post-war recovery in Kyiv.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that documents on security guarantees for Ukraine were ready.
Media outlet Izvestia said Grushko listed elements of what might be contained in such guarantees.
Ukrainian skeleton racer wears helmet paying tribute to athletes killed in war
Ukrainian skeleton athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych trained wearing a helmet brandished with images of compatriots killed during the war in his homeland, delivering on a promise to use the Winter Olympics to keep attention on the conflict.
Visible on the helmet are teenage weightlifter Alina Perehudova, boxer Pavlo Ischenko, ice hockey player Oleksiy Loginov, actor and athlete Ivan Kononenko, diving athlete and coach Mykyta Kozubenko, shooter Oleksiy Habarov and dancer Daria Kurdel.
“Some of them were my friends,” Heraskevych, who is his country’s flag bearer, told Reuters of the portraits after his training session at the Cortina sliding centre.
Pope Leo sends generators, medicines and food for winter-stricken Ukrainians
Pope Leo XIV said he is sending 80 electric generators and thousands of medical supplies to Ukraine, extending help to millions of civilians facing harsh winter temperatures amid Russian attacks.
The Vatican announced that the Dicastery for the Service of Charity has sent three lorries carrying 80 electricity generators to the country at the pope’s request.
“Night-time temperatures are falling to minus 15 degrees Celsius, while daytime temperatures range between minus 10 and minus 12 degrees. Many people have been forced to leave their homes in order to find warmth in heated shelters where, thanks to the generators, they are also able to receive a hot meal,” the statement said.
Thousands of medicines, including antibiotics, anti-inflammatories, supplements and melatonin, have also been dispatched due to “demand as it helps people sleep amid ongoing fear and constant stress”, the Vatican said.
Why does Russia want Pokrovsk?
Russia wants to take the whole of the Donbas region, which comprises the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces. Ukraine still controls about 10 per cent of Donbas – an area of about 5,000 square km (1,930 square miles) in western Donetsk.
President Vladimir Putin claims the Donbas is now legally part of Russia, after his forces seized the provinces’ regional capitals and carried out a local “referendum” on joining Russia. The international community has rejected this as an illegal land grab.
Capturing Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, and Kostiantynivka to the northeast which Russian forces are also trying to envelop, would give Moscow its most important single territorial gain inside Ukraine since it took the ruined city of Avdiivka in early 2024.
It would also would give Moscow a platform to drive north towards the two biggest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in Donetsk – Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
Putin would never have stopped if not for Ukrainian army, says Klitschko
Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says there is no limit to the expansionist goals of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, saying the Russian army would “never” have stopped if not for Ukraine’s resistance.
Klitschko was speaking to MPs in the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday.
“That’s why my message is that only together, we can stop Putin. Because Putin would go so far as we allow him to go,” he said.
“Ukraine, if we were not successful, definitely Putin [would] never [have] stopped in Ukraine,” he said.
He also said that Ukraine is fighting against “one of the strongest and biggest armies, [the] Russian army” which it has been “successfully defending” against for four years.
Klitschko described Russia’s war as “genocide”, saying that the east of Ukraine is “totally destroyed”.“[Russia] destroyed the cities, destroyed the villages, destroyed a big part of our homeland,” he said.
Watch: Child and mother among four killed in Russian drone and missile strikes
Still a long way to go in talks on Ukraine, Russia’s Lavrov says
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said there was no reason to be excited about US president Donald Trump’s pressure on Europe and Ukraine as there is still “a long way to go” in peace talks.
His remarks come a day after he dampened hopes for an economic cooperation deal with the Trump administration, decrying the US’s declared aim of “economic dominance”.
“We also don’t see any bright future in the economic sphere,” Lavrov said.
Looking to cash in on wartime tech, Ukraine opens up arms exports
Ukraine is opening up exports of its domestically produced weapons, president Volodymyr Zelensky says, as a way for Kyiv to cash in on its wartime technological developments and generate badly needed funds.
Zelensky said 10 “export centres” for Ukrainian weapons would be opened in 2026 across Europe, adding that combat drones would be among the exports.
“Today, Europe’s security is built on technology and drones,” Zelensky said on Sunday evening.”All of this will be based largely on Ukrainian technology and Ukrainian specialists,” he said.
Zelensky said production of Ukrainian drones would begin in Germany in February, adding to those already being built in the UK under a joint production initiative. He did not identify the companies involved.
Ukraine’s allies have expressed interest in learning from its wartime experience and technological innovation to bolster their own forces, many of them weakened by decades of low defence spending.
Ukraine-born Trowbridge singer raises funds for citizens back home
Yana Kozah, a Ukrainian singer and songwriter who fled Ukraine after the Russian invasion, is now using her voice to perform and raise funds to help people back at home.
The Trowbridge resident sings in a choir and even performs solo so that she can raise money for John’s Red Bus, a UK charity delivering aid.
“[In Ukraine,] people are without heating, no light. Sometimes you wish you could not read the news but then you remember these people are living it, they cannot turn it off,” Kozah told BBC West Point.
She has previously raised funds for Ukrainian children.
“The main reason I’m trying to do what I’m doing is to help my country in ways I can,” she said.
Source: independent.co.uk