Update on the situation, Monday, January 29th, 9 p.m.
- The head of Hungarian diplomacy in Ukraine is preparing for a meeting between Orban and Zelensky
Hungarian diplomacy chief Péter Szijjarto met his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba in western Ukraine on Monday ahead of a European summit focused on financial aid for the country, which is at war following Budapest's recent veto . Balazs Orban, political advisor to the Hungarian Prime Minister, said this on Monday morning on the social network that Hungary is ready to release aid from the European Union (EU) amounting to 50 billion euros to Ukraine.
- NATO Secretary General in Washington to discuss aid to Ukraine
Jens Stoltenberg was received by Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin in the morning before meeting with US diplomatic chief Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan in the afternoon. He is expected to meet on Tuesday in Congress with Republican and Democratic representatives as they negotiate an agreement on a new budget for Ukraine.
- Ukraine says it is trying to “expand” its bridgehead on the occupied bank of the Dnieper.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces are continuing their efforts to expand their bridgehead on the left bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region,” the Army General Staff said in its morning report.
- Moscow claims the capture of a hamlet near Kupyansk, Kiev denies this
The city of Tabaivka “in the Kharkiv region has been liberated,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram. The hamlet is about thirty kilometers from the city of Kupyansk, an area where Russian forces have been on the offensive since the summer. But the Ukrainian army had already denied this capture a little earlier, without even waiting for official statements from the Russian authorities, as the news had already been spread on Telegram channels the day before.
- Vladimir Putin's presidential candidacy was confirmed in Russia
“The Russian Election Commission has registered Vladimir Putin's candidacy for president,” the institution said on Monday on Telegram ahead of March's presidential election, a vote in which the head of state was expected to dominate, l The opposition was largely suppressed by repression silenced.
- The Ukrainian army says it shot down eight Russian drones overnight
The Ukrainian Air Force claims in its morning report that it destroyed “eight Shahed-136/131 attack drones” that Russia fired over the country during the night “in the Mykolaiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Khmelnytsky and Rivne regions.”
- Drone attack on Yaroslav refinery in Russia foiled, says regional governor
According to the regional governor, Russian air defense was able to repel a drone attack on the Slavneft-YANOS oil refinery in the city of Yaroslav on Monday.
- British intelligence assesses Russian tank losses and their ability to replace them
In his situation update on January 29th, he said British Ministry of Defense Russia is estimated to have lost about 2,600 main battle tanks and 4,900 other armored fighting vehicles in Ukraine from February 24, 2022 to January 25, 2024. It appears that Russian ground forces lost about 40% fewer vehicles in 2023 than in 2022.