Overview
- Ukraine’s General Staff counted 115 combat engagements by late evening, with 26 attacks on the Pokrovsk axis and heavy fighting reported around Huliaipole and other Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia sectors.
- Russian strikes killed civilians and damaged infrastructure, including one dead and two injured in Odesa, one dead and 17 injured in Kharkiv region, two dead in Chernihiv region, and a drone hit on an evacuation mission in Kostyantynivka that left one dead and two injured.
- Ukrenergo reported outages in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions and emergency shutoffs in Odesa, while a strike on the Illichivsk oil-and-fat plant in Chornomorsk ignited a large blaze and oil spill, according to operator Kernel.
- Ukraine said its Air Force used Storm Shadow missiles to strike the Novoshakhtinsk oil products plant in Russia’s Rostov region, where the governor confirmed explosions and a fire, and Krasnodar authorities reported drone-caused fires at fuel tanks in Temryuk port.
- Ukraine’s security service secured a 15-year sentence for a Belarus KGB agent and detained two pro‑Kremlin agitators, as U.S. senators issued a bipartisan statement condemning Russian attacks on civilians over Christmas.