Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken control of the village of Starytsya in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, near the border town of Vovchansk. Ukraine’s military did not confirm the claim, saying fighting was continuing in the area and that no territorial losses had been acknowledged.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Russian forces carried out six attacks near Starytsya, adding that independent verification of battlefield claims was not immediately possible.
Russian drone and missile strikes overnight killed at least one person and left millions without electricity and heating during freezing winter temperatures, Ukrainian officials said.
The attacks came as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators resumed U.S.-brokered peace talks in Abu Dhabi on Saturday, 24 January.
Ukraine said hundreds of drones and missiles hit energy infrastructure in Kyiv and the eastern city of Kharkiv, injuring 31 people and causing widespread power outages.
Fires broke out in residential buildings in the capital, while a hospital and a maternity hospital were damaged in Kharkiv, officials reported.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 375 drones and 21 missiles overnight, again targeting energy facilities and cutting power and heating across large parts of Kyiv.
More than 1.2 million people in Kyiv and the northern Chernihiv region were left without electricity, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister said, with temperatures falling to around minus 10 Celsius.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, accused Vladimir Putin of acting "cynically", adding that the attacks showed his "place is not at the Board of Peace, but in the dock of the special tribunal". Sybiha was not attending the talks.
Kyiv is under mounting pressure from the Trump administration to make concessions to reach a peace deal in the war triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Zelenskyy said on Friday it was too early to draw conclusions from the first day of talks and urged Moscow to demonstrate that it was ready to end the conflict. Senior representatives from Ukraine’s armed forces and military intelligence were due to join the discussions.
U.S. peace envoy Steve Witkoff struck an optimistic tone earlier this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying only one major sticking point remained in the negotiations. Russian officials, however, have expressed greater scepticism.
Donbas remains key obstacle
Ahead of the talks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia had not dropped its demand that Ukraine cede all of the eastern Donbas region, including the industrial heartlands of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Putin has insisted that Ukraine surrender the roughly 20% of Donetsk it still controls, an area of about 5,000 sq km.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly rejected any territorial concessions involving land Russian forces have failed to seize during four years of grinding warfare. Opinion polls show little support among Ukrainians for giving up territory.
The Ukrainian president said the latest strikes showed there must be no delays in supplying Ukraine with air-defence systems agreed with U.S. President Donald Trump in Davos, adding that those commitments must be "fully implemented".
Russia argues the attacks targeted facilities producing long-range drones and energy sites linked to Ukraine’s military-industrial complex.
Moscow says it supports a diplomatic settlement but will continue military operations while negotiations fail to deliver an agreement.
Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council and head of the Ukrainian delegation, said the first day of talks focused on possible parameters for ending the war and the "further logic of the negotiation process".
Both Zelenskyy and Trump described their meeting on the sidelines of the Davos forum as positive, but provided few details.
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Start your day informed with the AnewZ Morning Brief. Here are the top stories for the 5th of May, covering the latest developments you need to know.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said on Monday (4 May) that meteorological monitoring equipment at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in south-eastern Ukraine had been damaged by a drone.
A Russian missile strike killed six people in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region on Monday (4 May), as Kyiv reported fresh attacks on energy infrastructure and a sharp rise in drone strikes on ports.
Ukraine has launched a new wave of drone strikes on Sunday (3 May) across Russia, hitting key infrastructure and causing casualties in several regions, officials on both sides said.
The U.S military said it carried out retaliatory strikes on Iran on Thursday (7 May). Meanwhile, Iran's Joint Military Command accused the U.S. of breaching the ceasefire, by striking an Iranian oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz and launching attacks on several Iranian cities.
The U.S. and Iran exchanged fire in and around the Strait of Hormuz, though both sides signalled they did not want escalation. The clashes come as Washington awaits Tehran’s response to a proposed deal to end the war while leaving key disputes, such as Iran’s nuclear programme, unresolved for now.
Singapore has isolated and is testing two of its residents who travelled aboard a cruise ship linked to a deadly hantavirus outbreak, the Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) said on Thursday.
Efforts to end the U.S.-Iran war appeared to stall as the two sides exchanged fire in and around the Strait of Hormuz. A reported CIA assessment suggested Tehran could withstand a U.S. naval blockade for months despite mounting sanctions and renewed Gulf attacks.
Ukraine’s military said it struck a Russian Karakurt-class small missile carrier in the Caspian Sea near Russia’s Dagestan region on Thursday. The extent of the damage is still being assessed, according to Kyiv.
Somalia is facing a severe malnutrition crisis and urgently needs additional humanitarian funding to prevent conditions deteriorating further, the World Food Programme has warned.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to carry on as leader on Friday (8 May) after his ruling Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local elections. Labour lost hundreds of councillors across the country, as some figures in the party said he should stand down.
Indonesian rescue teams have located two Singaporeans who went missing after Mount Dukono erupted on Friday (8 May) on the island of Halmahera, though authorities say it remains unclear whether they are alive.
Health authorities are monitoring a widening hantavirus alert after new suspected cases emerged in Spain and on a remote South Atlantic island, days after an outbreak on a cruise ship left three people dead and several others infected.
The U.S. Defense Department has released dozens of previously classified files on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) on Friday (8 May), following an order from President Donald Trump. U.S. officials described as a push for “unprecedented transparency”.
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