Here is the situation on Friday, January 10:

Fighting

• Two people were killed when Russian forces shelled the town of Siversk in the Donetsk region, according to Governor Vadym Filaskhin.

• Two people were also killed when the town of Kamyanka-Dniprovska in the Russian-controlled area of Zaporizhia region, came under Ukrainian fire, Moscow-appointed Governor Yevgeny Belitsky said. On Wednesday, a Russian guided bomb attack on Ukrainian-controlled area of the region killed at least 13 civilians and injured about 30 others.
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia has launched more than 51,000 guided aerial bombs against Ukraine since the start of its full-blown invasion nearly three years ago.
• Russian forces have established a bridgehead on the Ukrainian-held side of the front-line Oskil river in the east of the country, an official said, pointing to Kyiv’s mounting battlefield struggles. The river is the de facto front line in parts of the eastern Kharkiv region.

Weapons

• An international coalition to procure unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for Ukraine, co-led by the United Kingdom and Latvia, will send 30,000 newly ordered drones to Kyiv, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

Politics and diplomacy

Advertisement

• US President-elect Donald Trump said a meeting was being set up between him and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He did not set a timeline for the meeting.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the latest meetings with Kyiv’s Western allies in Germany had resulted in pledges of an additional $2bn in military aid to help it fight the war against Russia.
• The US will provide Ukraine with an additional $500m in military aid, including air defence missiles, air-to-ground munitions and support equipment for F-16 fighter jets, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced.
• Zelenskyy held talks in Rome with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni after meeting other allies in Germany. During the meeting, Meloni “reiterated the all-round support that Italy ensures and will continue to provide” to defend Ukraine.
• French President Emmanuel Macron said in a post on X that he met with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and both reaffirmed their commitment to support Ukraine and discussed several other issues.
• Moldovan President Maia Sandu visited areas hit by rolling power cuts and blamed Russian gas giant Gazprom for the energy crisis gripping the country’s pro-Russian separatist enclave of Transnistria. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moldova and Ukraine were responsible for the heating and power shortages.
• Officials in Transnistria said blackouts would be reduced from eight hours a day to five starting on Friday ahead of a weekend cold snap sending temperatures below zero Celsius.
• Slovakia is weighing retaliation against Ukraine, including withholding aid, if a solution is not found to Kyiv’s decision to shut off Russian gas, Prime Minister Robert Fico warned after talks with European Union Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz voiced opposition to Trump’s call for NATO members to raise defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product. He said current NATO rules require alliance members to spend 2 percent of GDP on defence.

Advertisement

Transport

• The EU Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has warned non-European carriers not to fly in western Russian airspace due to the risk of being unintentionally targeted by its air defence systems.
• EASA said the crash last month in Kazakhstan of an Azerbaijan Airlines plane, as Russian air defences fired on Ukrainian drones, demonstrated the high risk. At least 38 people died in the crash.