These are the key developments from day 1,439 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 2 Feb 2026
Here is where things stand on Monday, February 1:
Fighting
- A Russian drone strike on a bus carrying miners in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region killed at least 12 people, according to officials.
- Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal denounced the strike as a “cynical and targeted” attack on energy workers. Their employer, DTEK, said the victims were finishing a shift.
- Another Russian drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro killed a man and a woman, while nine people were wounded in Russian attacks on a maternity ward and a residential neighbourhood in Zaporizhzhia, officials said. Among those injured were two women undergoing medical examination.
- In a post on X, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of attempting to disrupt logistics and connectivity between Ukrainian cities and communities through its drone, bomb and missile attacks. He said Russia used more than 980 attack drones, nearly 1,100 guided aerial bombs, and two missiles against Ukraine.
- Nearly 700 apartment buildings remain without heating in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, due to previous Russian attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure, Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said, as a new wave of bitter cold swept across much of the country.
- Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces gained control over the village of Zelene in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, and the settlement of Sukhetske in the Donetsk region, according to the TASS news agency. The ministry added that Russian forces hit facilities of transport infrastructure used in the interests of the Ukrainian army.
- Tech billionaire Elon Musk said moves by his SpaceX company to stop Russia’s “unauthorised” use of its internet system Starlink seem to have worked, after Ukrainian officials reported finding Starlink terminals on long-range drones used in Russian attacks.
- Ukrainian Minister of Defence Mykhailo Fedorov said Kyiv was developing a system that would allow only authorised Starlink terminals to work on Ukrainian territory.
Politics and diplomacy
- Zelenskyy said a new round of trilateral talks between Russian, Ukrainian and US officials on a Washington-drafted plan to end the nearly four-year war has been postponed to February 4 and 5 in the United Arab Emirates capital, Abu Dhabi.
- Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, praised US President Donald Trump’s “brash” style as “effective” in seeking peace, but added that Moscow had seen no trace of nuclear submarines that Trump claimed he had moved to Russian shores.
- Medvedev added in his interview with the Reuters and TASS news agencies that Trump “wants to go down in history as a peacemaker – and he is really trying”, which explains “why contacts with Americans have become much more productive”.
- Medvedev also said that European powers had failed to defeat Russia in Ukraine, but had inflicted severe economic harm on themselves by trying to do so.
- Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu held talks with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi in Beijing, with China’s top diplomat saying that bilateral relations between the two countries could “break new ground” this year.
- Wang also told Shoigu that China and Russia must work together to uphold multilateralism in a time of “turmoil”, and “advocate for an equal and orderly multipolar world”.
- The US and Russia’s New START pact, the final treaty in the world that restricted nuclear weapon deployment, is set to expire on Thursday, and with it, restrictions on the two top nuclear powers. Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested in September a one-year extension of New START, but little has been heard from Trump since he indicated last year that an extension “sounds like a good idea”.