A Russian strike killed five civilians and wounded 55 on Tuesday in the town of Izium in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, partially destroying the city council building, said officials.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday and inspected an electricity distribution substation, warning that attacks on Ukraine’s power grid could pose a risk of nuclear accident by disrupting supply.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Tuesday his team spoke with US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and his top envoy on the war in Ukraine this week, and that they were working to arrange a visit by a US delegation.
Russian missile kills five, wounds dozens in Ukrainian town
A Russian strike killed five civilians and wounded 55 on Tuesday in the town of Izium in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, partially destroying the city council building, said officials.
A Russian ballistic missile hit the building in the town’s central district, said Governor Oleh Syniehubov on Telegram.
Three children were among the injured, who also included many local government and social services workers, he said.
Bodies of those killed in the strike lay in black bags on the pavement.
“This brutality cannot be tolerated. Maximum pressure must be applied to Russia — through military force, sanctions, and diplomacy — to stop the terror and protect lives,” said President Volodymyr Zelensky on X, commenting on the strike.
Syniehubov said there were no military facilities in the area. One more administrative building was damaged, as well as residential blocks nearby, he added.
IAEA chief warns of nuclear risk from attacks on Ukraine grid
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday and inspected an electricity distribution substation, warning that attacks on Ukraine’s power grid could pose a risk of nuclear accident by disrupting supply.
“I’m at Kyivska electrical substation — an important part of Ukraine’s power grid essential for nuclear safety,” Grossi wrote on X. “A nuclear accident can result from a direct attack on a plant, but also from power supply disruption.”
Grossi posted pictures of him visiting the substation alongside Energy Minister German Galushchenko, and being shown what appeared to be defences against Russian strikes.
Moscow has regularly bombarded Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including substations, throughout its three-year invasion, although it has avoided direct strikes on Ukraine’s nuclear plants.
Grossi said he would visit Russia later this week to discuss the situation in Ukraine and the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Russia captured the plant, Europe’s biggest nuclear power station, soon after its forces went into Ukraine in February 2022.
“It’s essential that I, in the discharge of my obligations keep channels of communication constantly,” Grossi told a news briefing.
Last week, the IAEA said that Grossi would visit Kyiv for high-level meetings to ensure nuclear safety in the war that Russia started in February 2022.
In September, Ukraine and the IAEA agreed that the agency’s experts would monitor the situation at key Ukrainian substations in addition to monitoring nuclear plants.
More than half of the electricity consumed in Ukraine is generated by three nuclear power plants. Russian missile and drone attacks on substations threaten the plants’ stable operation, according to Ukraine’s nuclear inspector’s office.
The Kyivska substation allows excess capacity from Ukraine’s west to be transferred to central regions thanks to the Rivne-Kyiv transmission line which extends for hundreds of kilometres, helping with power supply to Kyiv and the surrounding region.
Ukraine reports top-level contacts with Trump administration aides
Zelensky said on Tuesday his team spoke with US President Donald Trump’s national security adviser and his top envoy on the war in Ukraine this week, and that they were working to arrange a visit by a US delegation.
Kyiv has been trying to establish close relations with the new administration of Trump, who has said he wants to bring a quick end to the nearly three-year-old war with Russia.
“We already have working dates when the American team will arrive. Now the dates and members of the delegation are being agreed upon, and we are waiting for the team. We will work together,” he told a press briefing.
He said his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, had spoken with Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and that his team had spoken to Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, the day before.
In a readout of the call with Waltz, Yermak said he had spoken about the situation on the battlefield and progress with the mobilisation to replenish Ukrainian manpower.
The Ukrainian readout said they also discussed the need to organise personal contacts between Zelensky and Trump.
Trump has given away few clues as to how he will seek to settle the war in Ukraine.
He said on Monday that he wanted Kyiv to supply the US with rare earth and other resources in exchange for financially supporting Ukraine’s war efforts.
The call appeared to be a reference to part of a “victory plan” presented by Zelensky to his allies. The plan explicitly invited allies to participate in developing the country’s critical resources.
Responding to Trump’s comments, Zelensky told reporters at a briefing in Kyiv that: “I talked about this back in September, when we had a meeting with President Trump.”
He said Ukraine was open to investment from allies who were helping it in the war.
Ukraine wants to open food hub in Egypt, says minister
Ukraine was studying the possibility of opening a logistics hub in Egypt for supplies of Ukrainian agricultural products to the region, said Agriculture Minister Vitaliy Koval on Tuesday.
Ukraine, a global producer and exporter of grains, oilseeds and vegetable oils, has in recent months intensified efforts to penetrate more deeply into the North African market, especially after the fall of Syria’s Russian-backed leadership.
“On the instructions of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, we are exploring the possibility of creating a food hub in Egypt,” Koval, who was visiting Egypt, said on the Telegram messenger.
“Together with the Ambassador of Ukraine to Egypt, Mykola Nahornyi, we inspected the port infrastructure and locations where Ukrainian businesses can place their facilities — elevators, logistics centres, warehouses,” he added.
Zelensky said in December he had instructed his government to set up supply mechanisms to deliver together with international organisations and partners food to Syria in the aftermath of the fall of President Bashar al-Assad.
He also said he was preparing to re-establish diplomatic ties with Syria.
Ukraine has traditionally supplied its food to Egypt, and shipped 3.87 million tonnes of corn and 1.72 million tonnes of wheat to Egypt in the 2023/24 July-June season, according to UGA grain traderes union.
Ukraine brings back 12 children taken by Russia
Ukraine had brought home 12 children who were forcefully taken by Russia, said Zelensky’s chief of staff.
“As part of the initiative of the President of Ukraine Bring Kids Back UA, it was possible to return home 12 children who were under the pressure of the Russian occupation,” wrote Andriy Yermak on his Telegram messaging app late on Monday.
The Bring Kids Back UA programme is an initiative to return home all children forcefully deported from Ukraine.
Among those returned was a 16-year-old who lost her mother, a 17-year-old called up by the Russian army and an eight-year-old girl, said Yermak.
The press office of Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, said it had no information about the 12 children.
It told Reuters by email that the commissioner’s office took part in family reunifications with Ukraine with the involvement of international mediators when “additional efforts are required to facilitate movement and resolve legal issues. Other cases may occur within the framework of the current legislative field and logistical capabilities without the involvement of government agencies.”
Moscow and Kyiv have carried out several exchanges of children for reunification with their families since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Ukraine says more than 19,500 children have been taken to Russia or Russian-occupied territory without the consent of family or guardians during the war, calling the abductions a war crime that meets the UN treaty definition of genocide.
Russia has said it has been evacuating people voluntarily and to protect vulnerable children from the war zone.
Kyiv has brought back 388 children so far, according to data published by Ukraine’s Ministry of Reintegration.
In March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued warrants for the arrest of Lvova-Belova and President Vladimir Putin related to the abduction of Ukrainian children. Russia denounced the warrants as “outrageous and unacceptable”.
Russian drone attack damages homes and railway depot in Ukraine
Ukraine’s military said on Tuesday that it shot down 37 out of 65 Russian drones overnight in an attack that damaged businesses, a railway depot and homes around the nation.
Ukraine’s state railways Ukrzaliznytsia said Russia attacked a depot in the Dnipropetrovsk region, causing significant damage to infrastructure and premises.
The attack also caused fires at three private enterprises in the central Cherkasy region, said its governor, Ihor Taburets, via Telegram.
In the northeastern region of Sumy, it damaged eight residential buildings and one apartment building, said regional authorities.
Of the 65 drones, 28 more did not reach their targets, probably due to electronic warfare, said Ukraine’s military.
Ukrenergo, the country’s national grid operator, reported emergency power cuts in eight regions on Tuesday, citing damages from the missile and drone attacks.
It did not specify when the attacks took place.
The announcement followed emergency power cuts in nine Ukrainian regions on Monday.
Ukraine’s politics warms up as US focuses on war’s endgame
After Russia’s 2022 invasion, Ukraine’s normally febrile political life was becalmed under martial law. But there have been growing signs of activity picking up, as the US has set its sights on finishing the war with Russia quickly.
In the past week, one Ukrainian political camp has accused Zelensky’s team of caring more about elections than the war, Kyiv’s mayor has said a presidential appointee is sabotaging his work and opposition figures have been travelling overseas.
“It’s to do with Trump, the expectation that there will be negotiations. The activity has increased, there’s clearly more domestic political nervousness,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, a Kyiv-based political analyst.
In what could fuel a sense of a looming return to politics, Reuters reported on Saturday that Trump’s team wants Kyiv to hold a presidential election by the year-end, especially if it can agree on a ceasefire with Moscow.
Petro Poroshenko, a former president and leading opposition figure, has been pictured shaking hands with numerous foreign officials in recent weeks.
He denies it has anything to do with elections, which he says would work in Putin’s favour and destabilise Ukraine at a dangerous moment.
“Our task is to win the war,” Poroshenko told Reuters.
Yet his European Solidarity Party has accused Zelensky of trying to bar him from parliament and of focusing on “upcoming elections instead of handling the war”.
A former prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, has become more visible of late, meeting European Union officials abroad and protesting about Ukraine’s detention of a general over a botched defensive operation last May.
Last week, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko, a potential presidential challenger, accused Zelensky’s entourage of political intrigue, saying the city’s military administrator, appointed by the president, had deliberately derailed the work of his civilian administration.
Asked to comment, Zelensky’s team referred the matter to the city administrator, who has dismissed Klitschko’s allegations as unsubstantiated.
Fesenko said some political groupings were assembling activists and working on election campaign teams. He said he had seen no such activity in Zelensky’s camp and that politicians were probably jumping the gun if they saw an election looming.
“It’s a false start in my opinion,” he said.
US officials say no policy decisions have been made and their strategy on Ukraine is evolving. Ukrainian politicians, both from the ruling bloc and opposition, say elections before the war ends could undermine national unity.
There are also logistical challenges.
Serhiy Dubovik, deputy head of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission, told Reuters it would take at least four to six months to prepare so that campaigning could start ahead of an election, given the displacement of voters and widespread destruction.
Millions of Ukrainians still live abroad, millions more are internally displaced by the war, a fifth of Ukraine is occupied and frontline areas have been devastated.
Zelensky has said elections will happen straight after the end of martial law, which was declared to provide the state with emergency powers to fight Russia. The legislation explicitly prohibits holding elections.
Zelensky, whose five-year-mandate would have ended last May, has not said whether he will run again. This is not his focus, he says.
Putin, who has been in power for 25 years, says Zelensky is not a legitimate leader in a position to negotiate because no election has been held.
A Ukrainian government official told Reuters that Putin was trying to create a false pretext to avoid talks. Ukraine wanted to hold elections but it was impossible during a full-scale war, the official said.
Zelensky’s public trust rating is above 50%, according to opinion polls, although it has dropped since Russia’s invasion on 24 February 2022 invasion, when it rose to over 90% as Ukrainians rallied around the flag. DM