Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,434 

Here is where things stand on Wednesday, January 28:

Fighting

• At least four people were killed in a Russian drone attack on a passenger train in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Telegram. Zelenskyy added that four people were still missing, and that two people were injured in the attack.
• In Ukraine’s Odesa region, three people were killed, and 25 others were injured in a Russian attack on a building, the head of the regional military administration, Serhiy Lysak, said on the Telegram messaging app.
• One person was killed in a Russian aerial bomb attack on a kindergarten, which was being used as a community centre for Ukrainian people to charge phones and warm up during power outages, the head of the Kostiantynivka city military administration, Serhii Horbunov, said on Facebook.
• A man and a woman were killed in a Russian drone attack as they were trying to evacuate from the village of Hrabovske in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Ukraine’s army reported.
• Russian forces shot down 105 Ukrainian drones in a 24-hour period, according to a Russian Defence Ministry report carried by the TASS state news agency.
• The Russian Defence Ministry also claimed that Russian forces had seized the Ukrainian settlement of Novoyakivlivka in the country’s Zaporizhia region and Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi in the Kharkiv region, according to TASS.
• However, Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation under Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, denied that Russia had captured Kupiansk-Vuzlovyi, calling it a “lie”. Meanwhile, an open intelligence map of troop movements by Ukraine’s volunteer organisation DeepState did not show Russian troops in the area of Novoyakivlivka.

Energy crisis

• Ukrainian Minister of Energy Denys Shmyhal said that 710,000 people remain without electricity in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, as an energy crisis continues across the country following Russian attacks on power infrastructure amid freezing winter conditions.
• The European Union is providing 447 generators to be used in Kyiv, the city of Kropyvnytskyi and front-line communities, of which 76 were received on Tuesday, Ukrainian news agency Ukrinform reported.
• Nearly 1.3 million residents of Russia and Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia experienced electricity outages last week due to Ukrainian attacks, the ambassador-at-large of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rodion Miroshnik, said, according to TASS.
• Ukrainian state oil and gas firm Naftogaz said on Tuesday that a Russian strike had targeted one of its facilities in a western region of the country.
• Russian forces captured 17 settlements and took control of more than 500 square kilometres of territory (193 square miles) in Ukraine so far this month, Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, said on Tuesday, according to the Reuters news agency. However, the DeepState map puts this claim into doubt.

Politics and diplomacy

• US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that very good things are happening in negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in comments to reporters as he left the White House, without providing details.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, said the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from Ukraine’s Donbas region, currently under attack and occupation by Russian forces, was the path to peace. “Donbas withdrawal is the path to peace for Ukraine,” Dmitriev said on X.
• An oil tanker under EU sanctions for carrying Russian oil is being escorted to the port of Tanger Med in Morocco by a Spanish rescue ship, Spain’s Merchant Marine said.
• Finland’s prime minister, Petteri Orpo, told reporters in Beijing that China and its president, Xi Jinping, have the opportunity to bring about an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine by influencing Putin and reducing cooperation with Moscow.
• Chinese Minister of Defence Dong Jun told his Russian counterpart that Beijing was willing to enhance strategic coordination with Moscow and jointly improve their capacity to respond to risks and challenges, state media reported.
• “China is willing to work with Russia to earnestly implement the important consensus reached by the two heads of state, strengthen strategic coordination, enrich the substance of cooperation, and improve exchange mechanisms,” Dong said in a video call with Russian Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
• Slovakia will file a lawsuit to challenge the EU’s decision, adopted by a qualified majority, to ban Russian gas imports, news website Dennik N cited Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico as saying on Tuesday.