Here are the latest updates as of Monday, February 2:
Fighting
At least 12 people were killed when a Russian drone struck a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, according to officials.
Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba condemned the attack as a “cynical and targeted” strike against energy workers. The victims’ employer, DTEK, said they were returning from their shift.
A man and a woman were killed in a Russian drone attack on the city of Dnipro, and nine people were injured in Russian drone strikes on a maternity hospital and a residential area in Zaporizhzhia, officials said. Two women undergoing examinations were among the injured.
Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to destroy logistics and transport links between Ukrainian cities and communities through drone, bomb, and missile attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X, blaming Russia. He said Russia used more than 980 attack drones, nearly 1,100 guided aerial bombs, and two missiles against Ukraine.
Nearly 700 apartment buildings in the capital, Kyiv, remain without heating following previous Russian strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure, Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said, as a new cold snap swept across much of Ukraine.
Russian forces have taken control of the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and the town of Sukhetsk in the Donetsk region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said, according to the TASS news agency. The ministry added that Russian forces struck transport infrastructure used by Ukrainian troops.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk said his SpaceX company’s efforts to prevent Russia from using its Starlink internet system “without authorization” appear to have worked, after Ukrainian officials reported finding Starlink terminals on long-range drones used in Russian attacks.
Ukraine is developing a system that will allow only authorized Starlink terminals to operate within the country, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.
Politics & Diplomacy
Trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine, and the US, originally scheduled for February 4-5 in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi, have been postponed to February 4-5, Zelenskyy said. The talks are intended to discuss Washington’s plan to end the nearly four-year war.
Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev praised US President Donald Trump’s “tough” style as “productive” in the search for peace, but added that Moscow has seen no sign of Trump’s claim to have deployed nuclear submarines off Russia’s coast.
Trump “wants to go down in history as a peacemaker — and he is really trying,” which explains “why contacts with the Americans have become more productive,” Medvedev added in an interview with Reuters and TASS.
Medvedev also said that the major European powers failed to defeat Russia in Ukraine, but trying to do so has caused serious economic damage to themselves.
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu held talks with * in *. * said that *-Russian bilateral relations are expected to “make new progress” this year.
also told Shoigu that during the current “turbulent” period, * and Russia must jointly uphold multilateralism and “advocate for an equal and orderly multipolar world.”
The New START treaty between the US and Russia, the world’s last remaining treaty limiting nuclear weapons deployment, expires on Thursday, and with it, the limits on the two largest nuclear powers will lapse. Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed extending New START by a year in September, but has barely mentioned it since Trump said an extension “sounds good” last year.