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Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
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A Ukrainian soldier and a woman have died after a grenade exploded in a Kyiv apartment, police in the Ukrainian capital have said, but the cause of the blast, which injured a second man, was not immediately clear.
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Explosives technicians and investigators were working at the scene of Sunday’s explosion in the Dniprovskiy district, Kyiv police said in a statement.
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“A citizen contacted the police with a report that an explosion rang out in a neighbouring apartment,” they added.
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The news came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed the commander of the military’s medical forces, Maj Gen Tetiana Ostashchenko, and said “new priorities had been set” in the operations of Ukraine’s military after a meeting with the defence minister, Rustem Umerov.
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“There is little time left to wait for results. Quick action is needed for forthcoming changes,” the Ukrainian president said in his evening video address.
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In other key developments:
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The Ukrainian army said it had pushed back Russian forces “three to eight kilometres” from the banks of the Dnipro River, which if confirmed would be the first meaningful advance by Kyiv’s forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.
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A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving earlier this year has returned to Ukraine. Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. “I believed I would be in Ukraine, but not on this day,” Yermokhin told Reuters while eating at a petrol station after crossing the border.
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About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks, including those carrying fuel and humanitarian aid, were stuck on the Polish side of the border on Sunday due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.
Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. -
Air defence units in Moscow intercepted a drone targeting the city late Sunday, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said units in the Elektrostal district in the capital’s east had intercepted the drone. No casualties or damage were initially reported. Air defences had also thwarted a drone attack on the Russian capital overnight to Sunday, authorities said earlier.
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Russia launched 20 Iranian-made Shaded drones targeting Kyiv and the Cherkasy and Poltava regions overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, of which 15 were shot down. The overnight strikes on Kyiv were the second attack on the Ukrainian capital in 48 hours, said the city’s military administration spokesperson, Serhii Popko.
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Five people including a three-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said. “All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.
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The pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be a “sham” with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his arrest that he and his supporters were entering politics.
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Key events
Reuters reports that a Japanese delegation led by senior industry and foreign ministry officials and including business representatives visits Ukraine on Monday for talks ahead of a reconstruction conference that Japan will host, the industry ministry said.
Japan, which has been supporting Ukraine with funds and by accepting refugees since Russia invaded in February 2022, has also been promoting support for Ukraine at the level of the G7, which Japan chairs this year.
Kazuchika Iwata, state minister of economy, trade and industry (METI), and state minister for foreign affairs Kiyoto Tsuji, are visiting together with representatives of Japan companies, METI said in a statement.
In Kyiv, the delegation, which includes members of Keidanren, Japan’s biggest business lobby, in charge of a committee on Ukraine’s reconstruction, plans talks with prime minister Denys Shmyhal, government officials and companies.
Shmyhal said this month Ukraine would need budget support of about $42bn this year and next year to plug a massive deficit and aid reconstruction from the devastation caused by Russia’s invasion.
METI said the visit was an opportunity to hear about Ukraine’s needs and to discuss specific projects and accelerate public and private efforts to help.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy – who visited Japan in May during a G7 summit – and prime minister Fumio Kishida agreed this month to hold a Japan-Ukraine Conference for promotion of Economic Reconstruction in Tokyo on 19 February.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the war in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier and a woman have died after a grenade exploded in a Kyiv apartment, police in the Ukrainian capital have said, but the cause of the blast, which injured a second man, was not immediately clear.
Explosives technicians and investigators were working at the scene of Sunday’s explosion in the Dniprovskiy district, Kyiv police said in a statement.
“A citizen contacted the police with a report that an explosion rang out in a neighbouring apartment,” they added.
The news came as Volodymyr Zelenskiy dismissed the commander of the military’s medical forces, Maj Gen Tetiana Ostashchenko, and said “new priorities had been set” in the operations of Ukraine’s military after a meeting with the defence minister, Rustem Umerov.
“There is little time left to wait for results. Quick action is needed for forthcoming changes,” the Ukrainian president said in his evening video address.
In other key developments:
-
The Ukrainian army said it had pushed back Russian forces “three to eight kilometres” from the banks of the Dnipro River, which if confirmed would be the first meaningful advance by Kyiv’s forces months into a disappointing counteroffensive. Ukrainian and Russian forces have been entrenched on opposite sides of the vast waterway in the southern Kherson region for more than a year, after Russia withdrew its troops from the western bank last November.
-
A Ukrainian teenager who was taken to Russia from the occupied city of Mariupol during the war and prevented from leaving earlier this year has returned to Ukraine. Bohdan Yermokhin, who turned 18 on Sunday, appealed to Zelenskiy this month to help bring him back to Ukraine. “I believed I would be in Ukraine, but not on this day,” Yermokhin told Reuters while eating at a petrol station after crossing the border.
-
About 3,000 mostly Ukrainian trucks, including those carrying fuel and humanitarian aid, were stuck on the Polish side of the border on Sunday due to a more than 10-day blockade by Polish truckers, Ukrainian authorities said.
Polish truckers earlier this month blocked roads to three border crossings with Ukraine to protest against what they see as government inaction over a loss of business to foreign competitors since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. -
Air defence units in Moscow intercepted a drone targeting the city late Sunday, mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. Sobyanin, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said units in the Elektrostal district in the capital’s east had intercepted the drone. No casualties or damage were initially reported. Air defences had also thwarted a drone attack on the Russian capital overnight to Sunday, authorities said earlier.
-
Russia launched 20 Iranian-made Shaded drones targeting Kyiv and the Cherkasy and Poltava regions overnight into Sunday, the Ukrainian military said, of which 15 were shot down. The overnight strikes on Kyiv were the second attack on the Ukrainian capital in 48 hours, said the city’s military administration spokesperson, Serhii Popko.
-
Five people including a three-year-old girl were injured in Russian artillery shelling of Kherson on Sunday morning, the Ukrainian interior minister, Ihor Klymenko, said. “All of them sustained shrapnel wounds. The child and the grandmother were walking in the yard. Enemy artillery hit them near the entrance,” Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app.
-
The pro-war Russian nationalist Igor Girkin, who is in custody awaiting trial for inciting extremism, said he wanted to run for president even though he understood the March election would be a “sham” with the winner already clear. Girkin, who is also known by the alias Igor Strelkov, has repeatedly said Russia faces revolution and even civil war unless President Vladimir Putin’s military top brass fight the war in Ukraine more effectively. A former Federal Security Service (FSB) officer who helped Russia to annex Crimea in 2014 and then to organise pro-Russian militias in eastern Ukraine, Girkin said before his arrest that he and his supporters were entering politics.