More civilian victims in Ukraine, which once again ended up under a deluge of Russian missiles in a phase of the war marked by the extension of Ukrainian attacks across the border and in which there are no glimmers of peace. Kiev is convinced that the Kremlin does not want “neither a frozen conflict nor peace”, declared Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba: “Those who propose a frozen conflict claim to act in the best interests of Ukraine and the world, but in reality they are helping Vladimir Putin and ignores what Russia is today.” The Ukrainian official also said he was “quite confident” about the possibility that the EU would approve a new 50 billion aid package for Kiev despite Hungary's reticence.
«We don't have a plan B», he reiterated on the eventuality that these funds do not arrive, «we must concentrate all the energy and intellectual efforts on one thing: making plan A work». But, albeit in an involuntary play on words, it is precisely on a plan B that Brussels is aiming to circumvent Viktor Orban's veto: «The first option is that on the revision of the common budget we reach an agreement among 27 but a there is plan B”, underlined the Belgian Finance Minister, Vincent van Peteghem, listing the priorities of the rotating presidency of the EU. The Ukrainian dossier will be at the center of the extraordinary leaders' summit on February 1st. The topic will already be on the table at Wednesday's meeting of the permanent representatives of the 27 (Coreper II). «It will be an important appointment to understand how to work», observed the Belgian minister, who limited himself to saying on the contents of a possible plan B: «A plan B without Hungary is a plan that sees the participation of 26 countries» .
Meanwhile, the camp continues to claim civilian victims: in the morning the Russian army launched 59 different types of missiles and drones against Ukraine. Ukrainian defense shot down 18 missiles and 8 unmanned aerial vehicles. Civil and industrial infrastructure and military targets were targeted during the attack. The attack hit the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Khmelnytsky regions. The toll is at least 4 dead and several injured. Moscow claims to have used “long-range missiles launched from the sea and from aircraft, including the Kinzhal”.
The shelling also caused new damage to electricity networks in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions. Emergency repairs are carried out based on the safety situation, but due to bad weather the risk of blackouts is high. Today's attacks have forced tens of thousands of people in hundreds of settlements to contend with the cold.
Kiev's army warns that frost and fog make it practically impossible to operate reconnaissance flights with drones, thus blinding defense lines. Nonetheless, in the last 24 hours over 100 artillery shells have rained down across the border, in the Russian region of Belgorod, announced governor Vyacheslav Gladkov, specifying that there were no victims or damage. The call for evacuation issued days ago in light of the growing Ukrainian attacks led to the first transfer of civilians to safer areas: 300, not many apparently, but it is the most significant evacuation on Russian territory since the beginning of the conflict, now almost two years ago.
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