Here are the main developments on the 1045th day of the Russian occupation of Ukraine.
This is the situation on Saturday, January 5:
Fighting
- One person was killed and five were injured in a Russian drone attack in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
- Ukraine’s Air Force said it shot down 60 of the 93 Russian drones launched in the early hours of Friday morning.
- Three rockets hit a residential area near the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, killing one, wounding five others and destroying two houses.
- Four people were injured when the city of Sloviansk was shelled near the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia had launched 300 attack drones and 20 missiles at Ukrainian targets in the first three days of 2025.
- Russia’s creeping advance in Donetsk has captured 4,168 square kilometers (1,609 square miles) of territory at the cost of 430,000 soldiers, according to a new analysis.
- Ukraine will reportedly receive its first French Mirage 2000-5F fighters this month, according to French magazine Avions Legendaires.
- A Russian court has ordered Russia’s largest search engine, Yandex, to hide maps and photos of one of the country’s largest oil refineries following repeated attacks by Ukrainian drones, state news agency TASS reports.
Military aid
- United States President Joe Biden is expected to announce additional security assistance to Ukraine in the coming days, according to White House spokesman John Kirby.
Regional security
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the Financial Times that he believes China intervened to stop Russia from using nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
- A Finnish court has refused to release an oil tanker suspected by police of damaging an underwater power line and four telecommunications cables in the Baltic Sea. The tanker Eagle S was carrying Russian oil when the cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged on December 25 along with four telecommunication lines.
Politics
- Russian envoy to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya, told state-run Rossiya-1 TV that there was “nothing of interest” in US President-elect Donald Trump’s proposals to end the war in Ukraine.
- Blinken will begin his final trip in his role this weekend, which the State Department said will conclude with meetings in Paris to discuss European security and Ukraine with French officials.
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- Oil from two aging and damaged Russian oil tankers was discovered on Friday off the coast of Sevastopol, the largest city in Moscow-annexed Crimea, according to local officials. The ships were hit by a storm last month, causing one to sink and the other to capsize, spilling about 2,400 tons of heavy oil into the surrounding waters.
