Russian forces launched missiles on the centre of southern Ukraine’s port city of Odesa, a Unesco world heritage site, seriously damaging historic buildings and injuring seven people on Friday night, local officials said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, condemned the “deliberate strike” that again underscored the need to strengthen Ukraine’s air defences. He said Norwegian diplomats had been among those “who were in the epicentre of the strike” in the historic district. Seven people were injured and emergency crews remained at the scene, said Odesa’s regional governor, Oleh Kiper. All the injured were in “moderate” condition and receiving medical assistance, he said. Pictures posted online by Kiper and Odesa’s mayor, Hennady Trukhanov, showed the lobby and other parts of the Hotel Bristol, a luxury landmark built at the end of the 19th century, reduced to rubble. The Odesa Philharmonic concert hall, opposite the hotel, was damaged with many of its windows smashed. Museums in the district also were damaged. Kiper told national television that three explosions had resounded at intervals, which he described as a “well-established practice” by the Russian military of repeated attacks on the same target.
Ukraine believes North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russia’s army on the Kursk frontline have been withdrawn after suffering heavy losses, according to the military. “Over the past three weeks, we have not seen or detected any activity or military clashes with the North Koreans,” Oleksandr Kindratenko, a spokesperson for the Special Operations Forces, said on Friday. “We believe that they have been withdrawn because of the heavy losses that were inflicted.” Ukraine previously said it had captured or killed several North Korean soldiers in the Kursk region. The Kremlin declined to comment when asked on Friday about reports the North Korean soldiers had been withdrawn. The Ukrainian military said, meanwhile, that its missile and artillery forces had hit and destroyed a Russian army command post in the Kursk region.
Donald Trump said on Friday that he would be speaking to Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, and that they “will perhaps do something that’ll be significant”. The US president also said that Washington was having serious discussions with Moscow about its war in Ukraine. In an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump did not say who from his administration had been in contact with Russia but insisted the two sides were “already talking”. Since returning to office, Trump has criticised Zelenskyy, saying he should have made a deal with Putin to end the fighting.
Russia’s army said it had captured another village in eastern Ukraine, where its forces are advancing on the Ukrainian logistics hub of Pokrovsk. Russian troops now held the village of Novovasylivka, south-west of Pokrovsk in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the Russian defence ministry on Friday. Moscow’s troops are also close to cutting off a major east-west supply route – the M04/E50 highway – that runs towards the frontline in eastern Ukraine, Agence France-Press reports.
Firefighters extinguished a blaze that burned for two days at a petrochemicals plant in Russia’s Nizhny Novogorod region struck by Ukrainian drones, state news agency Tass cited emergency services as saying. It quoted the local emergencies ministry as saying on Friday that the “open fire” had been “liquidated”. Petrochemicals giant Sibur’s Kstovo plant, about 800km (500 miles) from the Ukrainian border, was struck on Wednesday alongside a nearby oil refinery. Separately, Ukraine’s military said it struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd region, causing explosions and a fire. Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation, said the refinery was one of Russia’s largest. Russian authorities said on Friday the fire was put out.
Moscow has accused Ukrainian troops of killing 22 people when they occupied a Russian village, including eight women who were allegedly raped before being executed – claims Ukraine denies. Russia’s Investigative Committee said on 19 January it was investigating the killing of “at least seven civilians” in Russkoye Porechnoye, which is about 20km from the Ukrainian border and has been retaken by Moscow. The committee said on Friday it was now investigating the killing of “22 residents” between September and November. A spokesperson for Ukraine’s military command in the Kursk region, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky, denied the allegations, saying: “I emphasise that the Ukrainian armed forces are not fighting civilians.”
Vladimir Putin has given the green light to investment bank Goldman Sachs to off-load its Russian subsidiary, a highly symbolic departure amid the western corporate exodus. The US bank, which was hired by the Kremlin in the 1990s to help attract foreign investors, announced plans to leave Russia in March 2022, just days after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Hundreds of western companies have exited the country since. The Russian president signed a decree on Friday authorising the sale of 100% of the shares of Goldman Sachs’s Russian unit to Balchug Capital, an Armenia-based investment firm. There were no details on the terms of the deal.
The Russian government has launched an inspection programme to check the state of the country’s tanker fleet after a major tanker-related oil spill, the Tass news agency cited a government official as saying on Friday. Authorities in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region declared a region-wide emergency after two ageing tankers, the Volgoneft 212 and the Volgoneft 239, ran into trouble during a storm in December resulting in a major oil spill.
Germany’s foreign ministry on Friday said it “strongly discouraged” citizens from travelling to Russia because of an increase in drone attacks in recent weeks and months, including in the Moscow metropolitan area.
