Here are the latest updates as of Thursday, January 29:
Fighting
The death toll from a Russian attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Tuesday has risen to six, with more bodies recovered from the wreckage, the Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office said on the Telegram messaging app.
A Russian missile attack injured at least six people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, the head of the regional military administration, Ivan Fedorov, said on Telegram.
Russian forces struck multiple locations in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, killing a 46-year-old man and injuring at least two others, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, said on Facebook.
A Ukrainian military strike on the village of Novaya Tavolzhanka in Russia’s Belgorod region killed one person, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service reported, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
A Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian-occupied city of Enerhodar in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region killed one person, Russian-installed official Yevgeny Balitsky said, according to TASS.
Fedorov has ruled out installing anti-drone nets as a defense measure, saying there are “more effective ways to counter Russian attacks,” Ukrinform reported.
Military Aid
France will provide Ukraine with more “French planes, air defense missiles, and aerial bombs” this year, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said following a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Regional Security
Setting a target to rearm Europe by 2035 is “too late,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at an event in Paris.
“I think it is most important to rearm ourselves now,” Frederiksen said. “Because we are dependent on the US, both in terms of intelligence, nuclear weapons, etc.,” she added.
Switzerland plans to increase its military spending by an additional 31 billion Swiss francs ($40.4 billion) over the next decade, starting in 2028, by raising sales tax.
“The world situation has become more turbulent, and the international order based on international law is under pressure,” the Swiss government said, noting that other European countries are also increasing their defense spending.
Politics & Diplomacy
Russia could only resume relations with the EU if European countries “stop their sanctions policy,” halt “arms supplies to the Kyiv regime, and stop sabotaging the peace process in Ukraine,” a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official for European affairs, Vladislav Maslennikov, told TASS.
European nations must focus on preserving “sovereignty, contributing to Arctic security, combating foreign interference and disinformation, and tackling global warming,” President Macron said at an event in Paris.
“France will continue to defend these principles in accordance with the UN Charter,” Macron said, declining an invitation to join Trump’s “Peace Commission,” which some critics see as a bid to replace the United Nations.
Peace Talks
Negotiations over Ukraine’s Donetsk region — part of the Donbas area, 90% of which is now occupied by Russian forces — “remain a bridge we have to cross in the Russian-Ukrainian talks,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing.
“It remains a sticking point, but at least we have been able to narrow the issues down to one central issue, which may be very difficult,” Rubio said.
Energy
Some 639 apartment buildings in Kyiv remain without heating, with nighttime temperatures expected to drop to minus 23 degrees Celsius (minus 9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this week, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.