Here are the latest updates as of Saturday, January 31:
Energy Crisis
Ukraine and Russia have begun a one-week pause in strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure due to plunging winter temperatures, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his Friday evening video address.
“From Friday evening onwards, there were indeed no strikes on energy facilities in all our regions. Practically none. There was only one strike on gas infrastructure in the Donetsk region — an aerial bomb,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed Moscow only agreed to the pause in strikes until Sunday.
“President Trump personally asked President Putin not to launch strikes on Kyiv for a week until February 1, in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations,” Peskov said.
Some 253 apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, remain without heating, with nighttime temperatures dropping as low as minus 23 degrees Celsius (minus 9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this week, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram.
Fighting
Russian forces attacked a minibus carrying passengers in Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing the 48-year-old driver and injuring five other people, two of them seriously, the region’s governor, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on Telegram.
Prokudin had earlier said that Russian drone, missile, and artillery strikes on Kherson over the past day had killed three people.
Russian forces attacked near the village of Novoosynove in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, killing a 47-year-old woman and injuring another 52-year-old woman, the region’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said on Telegram.
Russian forces launched one Iskander-M ballistic missile and放飞 111 drones at Ukraine in the early hours of Friday, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. Some 80 drones were shot down by Ukrainian forces, the ministry said.
Russian forces carried out seven attacks on Ukraine’s railway infrastructure over the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
Russian forces have taken the village of Ternuvate in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, Russia’s Defense Ministry said. Russian state media also reported that Russian forces had taken Richne in the Zaporizhzhia region and Berestok in the eastern Donetsk region.
Russian forces have taken Zlahoda in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region and advanced towards Hrabovske in the Sumy region and Yehorivka in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukrainian battlefield monitoring site DeepState said.
Politics & Diplomacy
President Zelenskyy told reporters on Friday that he had invited President Putin to talks in Kyiv, “if he dares.” He also said he was ready for talks in any format, but that he would not travel to Moscow or Belarus.
Russian lawmakers want Moscow to use more powerful weapons to achieve its war goals in Ukraine, the speaker of Russia’s State Duma said on Friday.
“State Duma deputies insist on the use of more powerful weapons — ‘weapons of retaliation’ — to achieve the goals of the special military operation,” speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote on Telegram.
Russia will use “all available means” to defend Russian-flagged vessels after the French navy this week intercepted a tanker suspected of being part of Moscow’s “shadow fleet” — the Gringo — and towed it to the southern French port of Marseille-Fos, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.
The EU has placed Russia on a blacklist for money laundering risks, the bloc’s top foreign policy official, Kaja Kallas, told reporters on Friday. “This will slow down transactions with Russian banks and increase transaction costs,” she said.