This content originally appeared on Al Jazeera.
Here is where things stand on Saturday, January 24:
Fighting
- Four people were killed and five were injured in Russian attacks on Cherkasy, in an area of Ukraine’s Donetsk region that is still controlled by Ukraine, Governor Vadym Filashkin said on the Telegram messaging app.
- Filashkin said that Russian forces shelled settlements in the Donetsk region 10 times over the past day, and that 109 people, including 17 children, were evacuated.
- Russian forces attacked the village of Komyshuvakha in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region with glide bombs and other weapons, killing one person, regional Governor Ivan Fedorov said.
- Russian forces launched drones at Kherson city and several villages in the Kherson region over the past day, killing one person and injuring two others, the regional military administration said.
- Russian forces killed a 72-year-old man and injured two others, including a child, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Hanzha, said.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 76 Russian drones of 101 launched towards Ukraine over the past day.
- Several people were injured in Ukrainian attacks across front-line Russian areas and Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, including five people injured on a bus in Russia’s Belgorod region, according to Russia’s TASS state news agency.
- The General Staff of Ukraine’s military claimed that Ukrainian forces hit a fuel depot and radar facilities, causing a fire, at the Penzanefteproduct fuel depot in Russia’s Penza region.
- The Russian Ministry of Defence said that its forces captured the village of Symynivka, situated about 47km (29 miles) northeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Ukraine-Russia-US talks
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- The first day of trilateral talks involving negotiators from the United States, Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi concluded late on Friday night, the Ukrainian presidency said in a post on X, adding that talks would continue on Saturday.
- Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a statement after Friday’s talks, saying “it is still too early to draw conclusions” about the substance of the negotiations.
- “By now, our team should already have at least some answers from Russia,” said Zelenskyy. “We will see how the conversation develops tomorrow and what results it produces,” he added.
- Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said on X that the meeting had “focused on the parameters for ending Russia’s war and the further logic of the negotiation process aimed at advancing towards a dignified and lasting peace”.
- The United Arab Emirates Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Friday that the talks were scheduled to last for two days “as part of ongoing efforts to promote dialogue and identify political solutions to the crisis”.
- Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov told reporters that talks between US and Russian officials on the eve of the Abu Dhabi meeting were “substantive, constructive and very frank”.
- Ushakov said that Russian Admiral Igor Kostyukov would be leading Moscow’s team in Abu Dhabi, and investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev would meet separately on economic issues with Steve Witkoff, the envoy of US President Donald Trump.
Energy Crisis
- Maxim Timchenko, the head of Ukraine’s top private power producer DTEK, told the Reuters news agency that the energy situation in Ukraine was nearing a “humanitarian catastrophe” following repeated Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
- Ukrenergo, Ukraine’s state grid operator, says there are emergency power outages in most regions of the country following Russia’s latest aerial attacks.
Regional Security
- The Swedish Air Force said on Friday that it “intercepted two Su-35S escorting a Tu-22M [Russian military aircraft] over the Baltic Sea” on Thursday.
- France’s navy redirected the oil tanker “Grinch” to the port of Marseille-Fos for inspection, suspecting it is part of a “shadow fleet” of vessels Russia uses to export sanctioned oil, according to Reuters.
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