These are the key developments from day 1,409 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Published On 2 Jan 2026
Here is where things stand on Saturday, January 3:
Fighting
Two people were killed, including a three-year-old child, and at least 31 people were wounded in a Russian ballistic missile attack on a five-storey residential building in the centre of Ukraine’s Kharkiv, the region’s governor Oleh Syniehubov wrote on Telegram.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence denied responsibility for the attack, claiming it was caused by the detonation of Ukrainian ammunition and was meant as a distraction from a deadly attack the day before on the village of Khorly, in a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region.
The death toll from the drone strike on a hotel and cafe in Khorly rose to 28 people, the region’s Russian-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, told Russia’s state-run TASS news agency. Saldo also said that more than 60 people were injured in the attack. Ukraine has responded to the strike by saying it does not target civilians.
Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said in a post on Facebook that Ukrainian authorities have decided to evacuate more than 3,000 children, along with their parents, from 44 front-line settlements in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions due to Russian aggression.
A Ukrainian attack on the electricity grid in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia region of Ukraine left 1,777 households without power, Russian-installed regional governor, Yevgeniy Balitsky, wrote on Telegram.
Russian forces shot down 64 Ukrainian drones overnight into Friday, Russia’s Defence Ministry said, according to TASS.
Ukrainian monitoring site DeepState reported Russian forces seized more land in the Myrnohrad and Pokrovsk areas of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, as well as in Svitle in the Ternopil region.
The Russian army captured more than 5,600 square kilometres (2,160 square miles), or nearly 1 percent, of Ukrainian territory in 2025, according to an analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which works with the Critical Threats Project.
According to the AFP news agency, the land seized by Russian forces last year was more than in the previous two years combined, but less than the 60,000sq km (23,166sq miles) Russia took in 2022, the first year of its all-out invasion.
Politics and diplomacy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov as his presidential chief of staff on Friday, in the latest Ukrainian leadership shake-up.
Zelenskyy also nominated Mykhailo Fedorov, a drone and digitalisation specialist who has served as first deputy prime minister and minister of digital transformation, as defence minister. Fedorov, whose appointment must be approved by parliament, will replace Denys Shmyhal, a former prime minister who was being offered a new government post.
RecepTayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkiye, told reporters in Istanbul that he would hold a phone call with United States President Donald Trump on Monday to discuss peace efforts. Turkiye has been hosting intermittent peace talks during Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Erdogan also said Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan will attend a meeting of the “coalition of the willing”, a group of nations backing Ukraine, in Paris, in the coming days.
