Here is the situation on Monday, January 6:

Fighting

• Russia says its forces seized control of Kurakhove, a town in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Gaining control over Kurakhove “has significantly hampered the logistics and technical support” of Ukrainian troops, the Russian Defence Ministry said. Kurakhove lies 32km (20 miles) south of Pokrovsk, an important Ukrainian logistics hub towards which Russia has been advancing for months.

• The Ukrainian air force said it shot down two Kh-59 cruise missiles launched by Russia overnight. Of 128 drones launched, 79 drones were shot down and 49 “imitator drones” did not reach their targets, it added.

• The Ukrainian military launched a new offensive in the Kursk region of western Russia on Sunday, where Moscow’s forces have been trying to push back Ukrainian troops for the past five months.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said Ukraine lost up to 340 soldiers in the past 24 hours in the Kursk region. It also said it shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29.
• Ukraine launched a counterattack in Kursk and “Russia is getting what it deserves,” the head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, Andriy Yermak, said on Sunday, adding there was “good news” for Ukraine from the region.
• Serhiy Lysak, the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, has said Russia attacked the Nikopol region with artillery fire “half a dozen times” overnight. He said Moscow also launched a “suicide drone over the region”. No casualties were reported.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has heard loud blasts near Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, coinciding with reports of a drone attack on the plant’s training centre, it said in a statement. The IAEA has not yet been able to confirm any effect of the attacks. The IAEA team also reported hearing machine-gun fire coming from the site on multiple occasions, it added.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, speaking in Seoul, South Korea on Monday, said Ukraine’s position in Kursk is “important” because it would “factor in any negotiation that may come about in the coming year”.
• Blinken said the US believes Russia is expanding space cooperation with North Korea in exchange for its troop contribution in fighting Ukraine. “The DPRK is already receiving Russian military equipment and training. Now we have reason to believe that Moscow intends to share advanced space and satellite technology with Pyongyang,” he said.
• Blinken also said the outgoing administration of President Joe Biden, which has given Kyiv billions of dollars in security assistance since Russia’s February 2022 invasion, wants to ensure that “Ukraine has the strongest possible hand to play”.
• President Zelenskyy said security guarantees for Kyiv to end Russia’s war would only be effective if the US provides them. “Without the United States, security guarantees are not possible. I mean these security guarantees that can prevent Russian aggression,” he said in an interview with US podcaster Lex Fridman published on Sunday. Zelenskyy said Ukrainians were counting on Trump to force Moscow to end its war and that Russia would escalate in Europe if Washington were to quit the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) military alliance.
• A Slovak government delegation travels to Brussels to discuss the gas situation after Ukraine ended the deal that allows Russian gas to travel through its territory to some European countries, including Slovakia.