Overview

• Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russia launched 103 drones and four missiles overnight, hitting ports, transport hubs and residential areas and causing multiple civilian deaths and injuries.
• Russian air defenses claim to have intercepted 39 of Kyiv’s drones during the strikes, but two civilians were killed and 11 injured when wreckage struck in Sochi’s Adler district and at an oil terminal.
• The Russian Ministry of Defence reported capture of the villages of Zvirove and Novoekonomichne in Donetsk as Moscow seeks buffer zones along the border, though independent verification remains limited.
• The United States approved up to $330 million in potential air-defence sales to Kyiv while Indian customs records show Ideal Detonators Private Limited shipped $1.4 million of explosive materials to Russia in December.
• Under pressure from public protests and the European Union, President Zelenskyy reintroduced draft legislation to restore the independence of anticorruption agencies NABU and SAPO even as Kyiv’s diplomatic appeals to China for a ceasefire go unanswered.