Zelenskiy said power shortages are persisting, with nearly nine million people remaining without electricity. “Shortages persist. Blackouts are continuing,” he said in his Monday night video address. “But the numbers and the length of the blackouts are gradually decreasing.”
Ukraine should fulfil Moscow’s proposals for settlement for its own good or the Russian army will decide, Russia’s foreign minister has said. “Our proposals for the demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime, the elimination of threats to Russia’s security emanating from there, including our new lands, are well known to the enemy,” state news agency Tass quoted Sergei Lavrov as saying late on Monday. “The point is simple: fulfil them for your own good. Otherwise, the issue will be decided by the Russian army.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted leaders of other former Soviet states in St Petersburg on Monday. In televised remarks Putin said threats to the security and stability of the Eurasian region were increasing. “Unfortunately challenges and threats in this area, especially from the outside, are only growing each year,” he said. “We also have to acknowledge unfortunately that disagreements also arise between member states of the commonwealth.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister said Kyiv is aiming to have a peace summit by the end of February. Dmytro Kuleba suggested that the UN’s secretary general, António Guterres, could be the possible mediator for peace talks with Russia, though Russia could only be invited if the country faced a war crimes tribunal first. “The United Nations could be the best venue for holding this summit, because this is not about making a favour to a certain country. This is really about bringing everyone on board,” he said.
Zelenskiy also said he sought India’s help with implementing a “peace formula” in a phone call with prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday. “I had a phone call with PM Narendra Modi and wished a successful G20 presidency,” Zelenskiy wrote on Twitter. “It was on this platform that I announced the peace formula and now I count on India’s participation in its implementation.” The Indian government said in statement late on Monday that Modi “strongly reiterated” his call for an immediate end to hostilities in Ukraine and conveyed India’s support for any peace efforts.
Russia’s FSB security service said a Ukrainian four-person “sabotage group” was “liquidated” while trying to enter the Bryansk region on Sunday, Russian state media reported. The alleged saboteurs were armed with foreign-made guns and four improvised explosive devices, the FSB said. There was no immediate comment on the incident from Ukraine.
Ukraine has called for Russia to be removed as a permanent member of the security council. The foreign ministry said Russia had illegally occupied “the seat of the USSR in the UN security council since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, and that its three-decade presence in the UN has been “marked by wars and seizures of other countries’ territories”.
A video has emerged allegedly shows members of the private Russian mercenary company, Wagner Group, calling the Russian armed force’s chief of general staff a “piece of shit”. Bellingcat’s Christo Grozev reports that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian businessman and founder of Wagner Group, said he has “nothing to say about this video”, which Grozev writes means the Putin ally is essentially endorsing the attack on Gerasimov.
