Summary
It is now 6pm in Kyiv. Here is a summary of the day so far:
Russia said 28 people, including one child, have died in Saturday’s shelling of a bakery in the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which is under Russian occupation. A further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services, according to officials. Kyiv has not made any statement on the incident.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has been visiting Ukrainian troops on the southeastern frontline and handing out medals.
Zelensky used the visit to announce a new mayor of the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Federov. Federov was once abducted by Russia and was previously mayor of the now temporarily occupied Melitopol since December 2020.
More than two dozen people, mostly journalists, were detained on Saturday at a protest in central Moscow where wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen mobilised to fight in Ukraine called for their return, according to a Reuters witness and independent Russian news reports.
Belgium is asking G7 countries to consider using €260n in seized Russian assets held by the west as collateral for loans to Ukraine, according to a report in the Financial Times. This would avoid questions around the legality of seizing the assets outright, as has also been considered by Ukraine’s allies, according to the paper.
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko set a world record for the total amount of time spent in space on Sunday. As of 8.30GMT, Kononenko overtook his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, according to Russia’s space corporation, Roscosmos.
Russia’s envoy in Seoul was summoned by the South Korean foreign ministry on Saturday to lodge a complaint over Moscow’s criticism of comments by South Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol on North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal.
The US House of Representatives is expected to vote later this week on a standalone $17.6bn aid package for Israel, pointedly excluding proposed military funding for Ukraine. Republicans have refused to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine unless aid was tied to domestic border reforms.
Ukraine is close to signing security agreements with France and Germany, with texts being finalised, according to the Ukrainian government.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has rowed back from a statement he made on Saturday in which he cast doubt over Ukraine’s ability to retake Crimea.
Two Ukrainian drones struck the largest oil refinery in southern Russia on Saturday. Local authorities in Russia said a fire broke out at the Volgograd refinery of the Lukoil company.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has appointed a man who was once abducted by Russia as the new mayor of the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, his office said on Sunday.
AFP has more here:
Zelensky made the announcement as he visited the southern front on Sunday, including meeting troops in the frontline village and fighting hotspot of Robotyne, which has been heavily attacked by Russia.
“The head of state introduced the newly appointed head of the Zaporizhzhia regional state administration Ivan Federov, who has been the mayor of the now temporarily occupied Melitopol since December 2020 and was in Russian captivity,” Zelensky’s office said in a statement.
Melitopol, a city 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of Zaporizhzhia, fell to Russian troops in the first weeks of their invasion in 2022.
Fedorov, 35, was abducted in March 2022 by Russian soldiers as they entered his city after refusing to cooperate with Moscow. He was held in captivity before being swapped for a group of young Russian soldiers that same month.
Fedorov replaces previous governor Yuriy Malashko, who on Telegram said he was handing over authority to a “new team”.
More details are emerging about Saturday’s strike on a bakery in Russian-occupied Lysychansk.
The death toll has reached 28 and at least one child was among the dead, local leader, Leonid Pasechnik, wrote in a statement on Telegram. He said that a further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services.
Ukrainian officials have not commented on the incident but Moscow-installed officials say it was Ukrainian shelling. The Russian state-owned news agency Tass reports that the flags of the Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) and Russia were flown at half-staff in Luhansk on Sunday in memory of the civilians who died.
An employee of the bakery, Sergei, who said he was taken to the Luhansk Republican Clinical Hospital after receiving injuries, told Tass that Ukrainian troops hit the bakery while they were unloading food.
“They brought food and started unloading it” he told Tass. “I literally didn’t understand anything, some seconds [passed] - I heard screams, something hit me hard, I turned around, and I was crushed under the slabs. A lot of [people] shouted: “Help, help”.
Daily life in Kyiv continues in relative normality away from the frontline. Photographer Ignacio Marin has sent these pictures from Ukraine’s capital today.
Zelenskiy has been visiting Ukrainian troops in the Zaporizhzhia region
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been visiting Ukrainian troops on the southeastern front and handing out medals, his office said on Sunday.
Reuters reports that the move comes amid intense speculation that his popular army chief could soon be sacked.
“It’s an honour to be here today. To support the warriors and award them. They face a difficult and critical mission to repel the enemy and defend Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said in a statement after visiting Zaporizhzhia region.
Updated
The BBC has published an investigation overnight into Russia’s use of prisoners to fight the war in Ukraine.
Ex-prisoners now face much tougher conditions, are forced to fight until the end of the war and do not get a pardon, they report. Under a previous scheme run by the Wagner group, prisoners used to receive a pardon and freedom after six months, even when they were convicted of violent crime.
The BBC reviewed messages in chatrooms and spoke to fighters and relatives, establishing that a unit spoke ‘Storm V,’ which has been run directly by the Russian military since February 2023, is sending former prisoners to the front line where they face harsh conditions.
One man called Sergei wrote in a chatroom for former Russian prisoners fighting in Ukraine: “If you sign up now, be ready to die”. He added: “Before you could wing it for six months. But now, you have to make it until the end of the war.”
Samantha de Bendern, associate fellow in the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, examines the mystery still surrounding the Belgorod crash. In an article for us today she argues that only an independent investigation could establish the facts – but that the likelihood of one being allowed is slim.
On 24 January, an IL-76 Russian strategic airlifter crashed 44 miles from the Russian city of Belgorod, close to the Ukrainian border. Many questions surround the circumstances of the crash, as well as the identities of those who perished. Russia claims that 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war (PoWs) were on board. Neither Ukraine nor any national or international body have been able to confirm or deny this.
Vladimir Putin has since claimed to have evidence that an American Patriot anti-aircraft missile downed the plane. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian SBU (security service) has opened an investigation into a “violation of the laws and customs of war”. While both sides are accusing each other of acting unlawfully, the mystery of who was on board and what actually happened is still unsolved a week after the crash.
The warring parties, as well as most journalists, ballistics and aviation experts and political analysts trying to make sense of what happened, agree on two issues: the plane was shot down by a missile, and a PoW exchange planned on the same day was cancelled.
Read more here: Ukrainian error or a deadly Russian trap? The Belgorod crash is yet another front in Putin’s war on truth
The US House of Representatives is expected to vote later this week on a standalone $17.6bn aid package for Israel, excluding proposed military funding for Ukraine.
Republicans have refused to support a $61bn military aid package for Ukraine unless aid was tied to domestic border reforms.
On a trip to Washington in December, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade Republicans on the issue. Key Republicans repeated that they wanted to see a crackdown on immigration between the US and Mexico in return for supporting the package.
Updated
Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko has today set a world record for the total amount of time spent in space.
As of 8.30GMT on Sunday, Kononenko overtook his compatriot Gennady Padalka who logged more than 878 days in orbit, according to Russia’s space corporation, Roscosmos.
He is expected to reach a total of 1,000 days in space on June 5 and by late September will have clocked 1,110 days, according to Reuters.
“I fly into space to do my favourite thing, not to set records,” Kononenko, 59, told TASS in an interview from the International Space Station where he is orbiting about 263 miles from the earth.
“I am proud of all my achievements, but I am more proud that the record for the total duration of human stay in space is still held by a Russian cosmonaut.”
Ukraine’s armed forces say more than 800 Russian soldiers died in conflict yesterday
More than 800 Russian soldiers died in the conflict yesterday, according to the overnight update of the General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
The figures, which have not been independently verified, put the total Russian losses from the war at 388,750 troops.
According to the report, Russia also lost 13 armoured vehicles, two tanks, 31 artillery systems and 41 vehicles and fuel tanks in Saturday’s fighting
Updated
Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been visiting Ukraine’s National Cancer Institute in Kyiv to thank staff on World Cancer Day. His pictures inside the hospital give an insight into all the ordinary medical work still taking place.
Today is World Cancer Day. I visited Ukraine’s National Cancer Institute to support our young patients, their parents, and everyone fighting this terrible disease. They are all very strong, with a strong belief in our defenders and Ukraine.
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 4, 2024
I am grateful to all doctors, nurses,… pic.twitter.com/FDSiJKHTIO
Russia’s envoy in Seoul was summoned by the South Korean foreign ministry on Saturday to lodge a complaint over Moscow’s criticism of comments by South Korea President Yoon Suk-yeol on North Korea’s pursuit of a nuclear arsenal.
According to Reuters, Chung Byung-won, South Korea’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, summoned Russian Ambassador Georgy Zinoviev on Saturday afternoon to stress that Moscow lashing out at Yoon’s remarks would only have a negative impact on the relationship between the two countries.
The summons came after Yoon’s comments on 31 January, when he condemned Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons to maintain the current regime. Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova then called this “biased” and “odious” in a statement released days after.
“Deputy Minister Chung said that it was very regrettable that Russia ignored the truth and unconditionally protected North Korea while criticising the leader’s remarks in extremely rude language, and emphasised that this would only worsen Korea-Russia relations,” the ministry said in a statement.
Ukraine shelling in Lysychansk killed at least 28 people, says Russia
Ukrainian shelling killed at least 28 people Saturday at a bakery in the Russian-occupied city of Lysychansk, according to officials installed by Moscow.
AP reports:
At least one child was among the dead, local leader Leonid Pasechnik wrote in a statement on Telegram. A further 10 people were rescued from under the rubble by emergency services, he said.
Ukrainian officials in Kyiv did not comment on the incident. Both Moscow and Kyiv have increasingly relied on longer-range attacks this winter amid largely unchanged positions on the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line in the nearly 2-year-old war.
The military administration for Ukraine’s Sumy region said Sunday that Russian forces had shelled the region in 16 separate attacks the previous day, firing on the border communities of Yunakivka, Bilopillia, Krasnopillia, Velyka Pysarivka, and Esman.
Updated
Opening summary
Welcome back to our continuing live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
A Tu-95 bomber pilot has been shot in the Russian city of Engels, according to Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, the GUR.
“The commander of the crew of the Tu-95 strategic bomber, Maj Oleg Sergeevich Stegachyov, was shot … he is directly involved in launching missile strikes on civilian objects in Ukraine and killing our people.”
The GUR said it was clarifying whether he survived.
More details soon, in other developments:
More than two dozen people, mostly journalists, were detained on Saturday at a protest in central Moscow where wives and other relatives of Russian servicemen mobilised to fight in Ukraine called for their return, according to a Reuters witness and independent Russian news reports.
Belgium is asking G7 countries to consider using €260n in seized Russian assets held by the west as collateral for loans to Ukraine, according to a report in the Financial Times. This would avoid questions around the legality of seizing the assets outright, as has also been considered by Ukraine’s allies, according to the paper.
Russia said 28 people died after shelling of the eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which is under Russian occupation. Ukrainian officials have not made any statement on the incident, but Ukraine has previously stated that it deliberately attacks only military sites, in contrast with Russia’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians.
In the US, Republicans in the House of Representatives have put forward a bill funding military aid to Israel, but pointedly excluding Ukraine. The US Senate has already put together a bipartisan compromise bill that covers Israel, Ukraine and US-Mexico border security.
Ukraine is close to signing security agreements with France and Germany, with texts being finalised, according to the Ukrainian government.
The actor Milos Bikovic has been dropped from the cast of popular TV series The White Lotus, according to the HBO network, after the Serbian’s ties to Russia drew rebukes from Ukraine.
Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has rowed back from a statement he made on Saturday in which he cast doubt over Ukraine’s ability to retake Crimea.
Two Ukrainian drones struck the largest oil refinery in southern Russia on Saturday. Local authorities in Russia said a fire broke out at the Volgograd refinery of the Lukoil company.
Ukraine’s air defences downed nine of 14 Russian drones in an attack on Saturday morning that hit energy infrastructure in the city of Kryvyi Rih, the air force and regional officials said.
