Here is the situation on Tuesday, January 7:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence has claimed to have captured the village of Dachenske, south of Pokrovsk, another major city in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, that its troops are targeting.
• Ukrainian police said a Russian drone strike targeted a bus in a Kherson neighbourhood on Monday, killing one person and injuring eight others.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia has suffered heavy losses amid the five-month incursion by Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region, with nearly 15,000 killed. The occupation of the southern Russian region has allowed Kyiv’s troops to establish a buffer zone, forcing Moscow to divert military units away from front-line areas in eastern Ukraine, he added.
• Several dozen Ukrainian soldiers have deserted while training in France, a French army official told the AFP news agency. The troops are now subject to a disciplinary regime “imposed by the Ukrainian command”.

Politics and diplomacy

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• French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Ukraine to have “realistic” expectations regarding territory as its fight against the Russian invasion heads towards a fourth year, saying he saw no “quick and easy solution” to the conflict.
• Moldovan authorities have summoned a Russian diplomat amid concern that the situation in Transnistria is worsening. The breakaway region risks a complete electricity blackout after Russia cut gas supplies.
• US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, has postponed a fact-finding trip to Kyiv and other European capitals until after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, according to sources.
• The patriarch of Russia’s Orthodox Church, celebrating Christmas alongside Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said that the Western world despises Russia and its “alternative path of civilised development”.