These are important developments since day 1,427 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Published January 21, 2026
Here’s what happened on Wednesday, January 21st.
finding
Russian troops have attacked the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya, killing at least three people, Governor Ivan Fedorov announced on the messaging app Telegram. According to the governor, several homes and cars were also destroyed in the Russian airstrike, leaving about 1,500 households without power. Earlier Russian drone and missile attacks killed one person in the Kiev region surrounding the capital. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address that Russian airstrikes left more than 1 million Kiev residents without power and more than 4,000 apartments without heat. Around 600,000 people have been evacuated from the Ukrainian capital since Kiev’s mayor, Vitaliy Klitschko, told AFP he had called on residents to temporarily relocate following a Russian attack on a vital energy facility. Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said 68 repair brigades had been deployed to Kiev following the recent Russian attack, and more than 1,400 emergency stations had enabled the capital’s residents to stay warm and charge their electronic devices during power outages. Governor Natalia Zabolotna said on Telegram that the Russian attack hit critical infrastructure facilities in central Ukraine’s Vinnytsia region, where the Ukrainian Air Force Command is the capital, adding that no one was injured. Governor Oleh Kiper said on Telegram that another Russian attack had damaged energy infrastructure facilities in the Odessa region of southern Ukraine. Kiper said a Russian drone also hit a high-rise residential building in the Black Sea port of Chorno Mosque, adding there was no information yet on casualties. President Zelenskyy said some of the weapons used in Tuesday’s deadly drone and missile attacks on Kiev and Zaporizhia were manufactured this year and called for tougher sanctions on Moscow to curb arms production.
Attacks on energy infrastructure
Ukraine’s Economy Minister Oleksiy Sobolev, attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, said Russian attacks have damaged about 8.5 gigawatts of Ukraine’s power generation capacity since October. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the attack affected several substations critical to nuclear safety, as well as power lines to several other nuclear power plants. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s worst civilian nuclear disaster, lost all external power after the Russian attack, according to the IAEA. Kiev later announced that the power plant had been reconnected. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Sibikha accused Russia of using the risk of nuclear disaster as a means of coercion. UN human rights chief Volker Turk expressed outrage at Russia’s “brutal” attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, saying civilians were “bearing the brunt”.
ceasefire negotiations
US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy are meeting in Davos on the sidelines of the WEF. The two leaders described talks on a possible peace deal to end the war in Ukraine as “very positive” and “constructive.” Ukraine’s peace negotiators also met with the national security advisers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom in Davos, said Rustem Umerov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council. Umerov said on Telegram that further meetings are expected. President Zelenskiy urged the United States to put more pressure on Russia, telling reporters he believed the United States could do more to get Russia to agree to a cease-fire agreement. Zelensky also told reporters in Kiev that he was concerned that Trump’s push to seize Greenland would divert focus from Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which is about to enter its fourth year. Zelenskiy said he was ready to go to Davos if the United States was prepared to sign a document on Ukraine’s security and postwar prosperity plan. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he did not believe European leaders were interested in ending the war his country started in 2022.
army
President Zelensky called on Ukraine and Europe to create a joint defense force of up to 3 million people to counter the Russian threat, as Russia plans to increase its military to 2.5 million people by 2030. Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has promised sweeping, data-driven reforms that will give Ukraine’s military an advantage over the larger and better-equipped Russian military. In his remarks to journalists, Fedorov also said that Ukraine will this month test an indigenous replacement for China’s DJI Mavic drone, which is widely used for aerial reconnaissance on the front lines of both countries. The manufacturer was not disclosed. The minister also announced that Ukraine would establish a system that would allow allies to train AI models based on Kiev’s valuable combat data collected over the nearly four years of war.
