Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,047

Here is the situation on Monday, January 6:

Fighting

• Russia says its forces seized control of Kurakhove, a town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The Russian Defense Ministry claimed that losing control of Kurakhove “has significantly hampered the logistics and technical support” of Ukrainian troops. Kurakhove lies 32km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, an important Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russia has been advancing for months.
• On Sunday, the Ukrainian military launched a new offensive in the western Russian region of Kursk, where Moscow’s forces have been attempting to repel Ukrainian troops for the past five months.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine lost up to 340 soldiers in the past 24 hours in the Kursk region. Additionally, it claimed to have shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29.
• Ukraine launched a counterattack in Kursk and “Russia is getting what it deserves”, the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, Andriy Yermak, said on Sunday, adding there was “good news” for Ukraine from the region.
• Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, has said Russia attacked the Nikopol region with artillery fire “half a dozen times” overnight. Moscow also “launched a suicide drone over the region,” he claimed. No casualties were reported.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has heard loud blasts near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, coinciding with reports of a drone attack on the plant’s training centre, it said in a statement. Any effects that the attacks have had have have so far cannot be confirmed by the IAEA. The IAEA team also reported hearing machine-gun fire coming from the site on multiple occasions, it added.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking in Seoul, South Korea on Monday, said Ukraine’s position in Kursk is “important” because it would “factor in any negotiation that may come about in the coming year”.
• Blinken claimed that in exchange for Russia’s troop contributions to Ukraine, the US is aware that it is expanding space cooperation with North Korea. Russian military training and equipment are already being provided for the DPRK. We now have reason to believe that Moscow intends to collaborate with Pyongyang in developing space and satellite technology, he said.
• Blinken added that the incoming president’s administration, which has provided billions of dollars in security assistance to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion in February 2022, wants to make sure that “Ukraine has the strongest possible hand to play.”
• According to President Zelenskyy, US security guarantees for Kyiv’s efforts to end Russia’s war would only be effective if provided. “Without the United States, security guarantees are not possible. In an interview with US podcaster Lex Fridman on Sunday, he said, “I mean these security guarantees that can prevent Russian aggression.” In response to Trump’s decision to end the Ukrainian War, Zelenskyy claimed that if Washington reneged on the military alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Russia would escalate in Europe.
• After Ukraine ended the agreement that allows Russian gas to pass through its territory to some European nations, including Slovakia, a delegation from the Slovak government is traveling to Brussels to talk about the gas situation.