These are the main developments since Day 1,437 of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Here’s what it looked like on Saturday, January 31st:

energy crisis

• Ukraine and Russia have begun a week-long pause in attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure amid plummeting winter temperatures, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a nighttime video address on Friday.
• “Since Friday night, there have really been no attacks on energy facilities in all our regions. Almost none. Except for the Donetsk region, where there was one attack on gas infrastructure – an air-dropped bomb,” he said.
• Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that Moscow had only agreed to suspend the attacks until Sunday.
• “President Trump did make a personal request to President Putin not to attack Kiev one week before February 1 in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations,” Peskov said.
• Kiev Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said on Telegram that 253 apartment buildings in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev remained without heating, with nighttime temperatures dropping to -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit) this week.

struggle

• Russian troops attacked a passenger minibus in Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing the 48-year-old driver and injuring five people, two of them seriously, the governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Oleksandr Prokudin, said on the Telegram messaging app.
• Prokudin said earlier that three people were killed in Kherson attacks by Russian drones, missiles and artillery in the past day.
• Oleh Syniehubov, governor of Ukraine’s Kherson region, said on Telegram that Russian troops killed a 47-year-old woman and wounded another 52-year-old woman in an attack near the village of Novoosinove in Ukraine’s Kherson region.
• Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said Russian forces launched an Iskander-M ballistic missile and launched 111 drones into Ukraine overnight into Friday morning. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said that about 80 drones were shot down by Ukrainian troops.
• Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko said that Russian forces launched seven attacks on Ukrainian railway infrastructure in the past 24 hours.
• Russian troops have captured the Ukrainian village of Ternuvat in the Zaporozhye region, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Russian state media also reported that Russian troops occupied the town of Richne in Zaporozhye and Berestok in the eastern Donetsk region.

• The Ukrainian battlefield monitoring website DeepState stated that Russian troops occupied Zlahoda in the Dnipropetrovsk region of Ukraine and advanced near Hrabovsk in the Sumy region and Yehorivka in the Zaporizhia region.

Politics and Diplomacy

• President Zelensky told reporters on Friday that he invite President Vladimir Putin will travel to Kiev for talks “if he has the courage,” adding that he is ready to participate in any kind of meeting but will not travel to Moscow or Belarus.
• Russian lawmakers want Moscow to use more powerful weapons to pursue its war goals in Ukraine, the speaker of Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, said on Friday.
• Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin wrote in a telegram: “State Duma deputies insist on the use of more powerful weapons – ‘retaliatory weapons’. And to achieve the goals of special military operations.”
• After a suspected Russian “Shadow Fleet” oil tanker, the Grinch, was recently intercepted at sea by the French navy and taken to the port of Marseilles-Fos in southern France, the Russian Foreign Ministry said it would use “all available means” to protect Russian-flagged vessels.
• The EU has blacklisted Russia over money laundering risks, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Karas told reporters on Friday. “This will slow down and increase transaction costs with Russian banks,” she said.