Russian attacks deepened the energy and humanitarian crises in Ukraine during the second week of the year, as temperatures dropped below freezing.
On January 9, Russia pounded Kyiv and several other cities with 242 kamikaze drones and 26 missiles, said Ukraine’s Air Force, which managed to shoot down all but 16 of the drones and 18 missiles.
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Even so, the drones and missiles that got through to Kyiv, Cherkasy, Kirovohrad, Odesa, Dnipro, and Lviv killed four people and wounded nearly 30.
The strikes left 6,000 apartment buildings and half a million people without power, heat and water in sub-freezing temperatures, with January winds howling into homes whose windows were shattered.
Approximately 1,000 apartment buildings in Kyiv were still without power two days later.
On January 13, Russia struck again, targeting power stations and electricity substations, killing another four civilians.
Emergency power cuts were introduced in Kyiv and Chernihiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and the Donetsk regions, the energy ministry said.
“Over the weekend, my apartment on the left bank [of the Dnipro river] had the luxury of having five hours’ worth of electricity within a span of 72 hours,” wrote deputy editor of the Kyiv Independent Oleksiy Sorokin.
“My apartment technically has heating, but it’s very weak,” wrote the newspaper’s head of social media, Liza Nechyporuk. “I bought several hot water bottles, and I use them while working and while sleeping.”
“The Russians are exploiting the weather – the cold snap – trying to hit as many of our energy facilities as possible,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
After the second attack, Zelenskyy declared a state of emergency for Ukraine’s energy sector and set up a coordination headquarters in Kyiv for repair work.
Zelenskyy also appointed former Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal as the energy minister with instructions to “increase electricity import capacities using all business opportunities.”
He said the situation was difficult in the whole Dnipro valley, including Odesa and Kryvyi Rih.
The Kyiv Independent said the latest strikes brought to 70 percent the proportion of the energy infrastructure hit by Russia this winter.
Even before Russia’s two strikes, Zelenskyy said the weather alone was “causing serious problems on the roads and with utilities,” calling it “an emergency situation for all services”.
Russian missile diplomacy
The assaults came after an agreement was almost reached between the United States and Ukraine on January 8, on the provision of security guarantees following a ceasefire.
At the same time, Ukraine’s allies, the Coalition of the Willing, were finalising the details of a multinational force that would be sent to help maintain a ceasefire.
“The architecture of post-war security is practically already in place,” Zelenskyy had said on January 6 at a joint news conference with France’s President Emannuel Macron and US negotiator Steve Witkoff.
On January 9, the United Kingdom said it was accelerating funds of $268m to finance the UK contingent of the multinational force.
Russia lambasted the developments.
On January 8, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova called support for a multinational force “militaristic declarations” from an “axis of war,” and repeated the Russian position that European forces in Ukraine would be considered “legitimate combat targets”.
To ram the point home, Russia included its newest ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, in the barrage that fell on Ukraine the following day.
The missile damaged an aircraft factory servicing F-16 and MiG-29 fighters in Lviv, Russia’s defence ministry said, but its diplomatic import was that it would be Russia’s weapon of choice against European troops.
Russian National Security Council chairman Dmitry Medvedev posted video of the Oreshnik strike on social media, warning members of the coalition, “this is what you’ll get”.
“It’s been said a thousand times: Russia won’t accept any European or NATO troops in Ukraine,” Medvedev wrote.
“Russia’s behaviour and rhetoric in no way indicate that they want to end this war,” Zelenskyy said on Monday.
Trump and Russia
Despite the fact that Ukraine has engaged with the US to formulate precise ceasefire and post-war security agreements, US President Donald Trump told the Reuters news agency that Ukraine, not Russia, was holding up a peace deal.
“I think he’s ready to make a deal,” Trump said of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal.”
Asked why negotiations had not yet ended the war, Trump said, “Zelenskyy.”
Asked why he thought Zelenskyy was holding up a deal, Trump said, “I just think he’s, you know, having a hard time getting there.”
“President Trump is clear that Zelenskyy is sabotaging and delaying peace,” agreed the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kiril Dimitriev, who has acted as one of Putin’s main negotiators.
Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine found that conflict-related violence killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in 2025, a 31 percent rise in the number of victims from 2024.
Russian officials appear to be demonstrating that they see dividends in deepening the cleavage between the US and Europe, now manifesting itself as a real crisis over the fate of Greenland, a Danish-owned, self-governed territory.
Russian Ambassador to Copenhagen Vladimir Barbin told Izvestia that under the Monroe Doctrine, “Greenland is considered within the sphere of US interests.”
“In this context,” he said, “it will be difficult to reconcile US ambitions, Greenland’s aspirations for independence, and Denmark’s sovereignty over this Arctic island.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov provided a reminder of Russia’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine on Wednesday.
The Trump administration, he said, “understand perfectly well that without resolving the issue related to the fate of people living in Crimea, Novorossiya, and Donbas, who categorically reject the [Kyiv] regime, having expressed their desire to return to Russia, without resolving this issue nothing will work,” he said during a visit to New Delhi.
