These are the key developments from day 1,410 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian recruits attend military exercises at a training ground near a front line on January 1, 2026 [Handout/Andriy Andriyenko/Ukrainian Armed Forces via Reuters]

By News Agencies

Published On 4 Jan 2026

Here is where things stand on Saturday, January 4:

Fighting

• The death toll from a Russian ballistic missile attack in Ukraine’s Kharkiv on Friday rose to four after it struck a five-storey residential building in the centre of the city, according to state media.
• The Ukrainian forces clashed 191 times with the Russian army in different parts of the front line, with the heaviest fighting reported in Pokrovsk and Huliaipole, according to an army update.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces captured the settlement of Bondarne in Ukraine’s Donetsk in the latest gain made in the contested region.
• The Russian military repelled two attacks by the Ukrainian army attempting to break through to Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region, where Moscow made recent gains, the Russian Defence Ministry reported.
• The Russian air defence systems shot down 90 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions overnight, the ministry said.
• One of two high-voltage lines supplying electricity to the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which Moscow captured in the early days of the invasion, has been disconnected, the Russian management of the station said.

Politics and diplomacy

• Security advisers from Ukraine’s top allies met in Kyiv for talks on a United States-brokered plan to end the war with Russia, including the United Kingdom, France and Germany, as well as representatives from NATO and the European Union.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Kyiv hopes for a leaders’ summit in the US by the end of January to discuss proposals on how to end the war with Russia, following a separate European leaders’ meeting in Paris next week.
• US President Donald Trump said he was frustrated with Russian leader Vladimir Putin over the continued war in Ukraine, repeating that he had initially believed that ending the war would have been easy.
• Zelenskyy has proposed Defence Minister Denys Shmyhal to become the country’s new energy minister and first deputy prime minister.

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