Just over three weeks after the fourth anniversary of the war in Ukraine, with the frost paralyzing the country already on its knees, the road of negotiations remains bumpy between appearances of accelerations and delays, such as the latest one, announced in the last few hours by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the second round of talks in Abu Dhabi between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials postponed until Wednesday.
Military escalation and transportation strategy
Despite the energy truce, Russian raids do not stop: today a drone targeted another bus causing 15 deaths. The vehicle was carrying Dtek miners, an indication that evokes a strategy by Moscow to paralyze transport – it is the third attack on a bus in recent days – including the railway line, crucial for military logistics but which since the beginning of the conflict has been a source of hope for keeping the country “alive” through land travel. Russian drones also struck during the night and in the morning, also hitting a maternity ward in Zaporizhzia. «An emblematic crime that demonstrates once again that Moscow is responsible for the escalation», attacks the Ukrainian leader.
The Washington-Moscow axis and the new dates of the trilateral negotiations
On have confirmed (but not denied) the new dates: the fact is that in the West Wing in Washington the dossiers are accumulating and becoming more complicated, with the focus on possible developments in the tensions with Iran which risks overshadowing the Ukrainian urgency, hanging on the promises of mini-truces already clearly denied by the facts and the deaths.
The war bulletin: attacks on civilians and hospitals
The bloodiest episode of the last few hours is the attack on the bus in the Dnipropetrovsk region, in the Pavlograd district. During the night and early hours of the morning, however, drones had already killed at least two people and injured seven others, according to local authorities. A drone hit a maternity hospital in the city of Zaporizhzhia, in the south of the country, with six people injured, including two women. Soon the report of a second raid in Zaporizhzhia, with the wounding of a child.
Russian advance and defense of the territory
Meanwhile, Moscow makes it known that its advance does not stop: land – the central issue in the negotiations with that peace plan filed on several occasions in the “territories” chapter on which Kiev still tries to keep track – is the “conquest” that Russia continues to claim when the Ministry of Defense declares that the army has taken two villages in Ukraine: Zelene, in the Kharkiv region, and Sukhetske, about 15 km north of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, reports the Tax. While Russian air defense forces intercepted and destroyed 21 Ukrainian drones overnight, “14 over the Belgorod region, five over the Voronezh region and one each over the Astrakhan and Kaluga regions,” the same ministry said.
Zelensky’s appeal for air defense
Zelensky makes the dramatic count: 12 thousand Russian bombs, drones and missiles against Ukraine in the month of January alone which “targeted the energy sector, the railways and our infrastructure”, reiterating that “the need to protect the sky persists. Missiles for Patriot, Nasams, F-16s and other platforms are needed every single day.”