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Washington wants elections in Ukraine says Trump’s special envoy

Donald Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia has said presidential and parliamentary elections need to be held in Ukraine, especially in the event of a ceasefire.

Keith Kellog told Reuters in an interview that elections “need to be done,” especially if Kyiv can agree a truce with Russia in the coming months.

Tatyana Moskalkova’s positive comments on the behavior of Ukrainian troops in Kursk received praise from independent media that was outmatched by the vitriol of pro-Kremlin bloggers.

On the same day that Russia’s Investigative Committee was accusing Ukrainian troops of killing 22 civilians and raping eight women in a village in the Kursk region, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova was commending the humanitarian conduct of Kyiv’s soldiers towards the residents of Sudzha.

In a televised report to the State Duma on Thursday Moskalkova, who supervises prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine on behalf of the Kremlin, said, “We shouldn’t lose our sense of humanity and see [Ukraine] only as an empire of evil.”

President Zelensky said Russia could not wreak such terror if not provided with thousands of components from sanctions evaders across the globe.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the aerial weapons the Kremlin uses to inflict terror and death on civilians every day in Ukraine are only possible because international sanctions evaders provide thousands of components to Moscow.

“In total, last night alone, the Russians launched 165 missiles and drones – of various types. In addition to the Poltava region, the Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Donetsk regions were also hit,” Zelensky said in his nightly address on Saturday.

An unexplained explosion left one dead and six wounded at a Ukrainian military recruitment center in Rivne that handles military records and is responsible for drafting new fighters.

An explosion at a Ukrainian military recruitment center in the western city of Rivne on Saturday killed one person and wounded six, police said.

Authorities did not say what caused the explosion or reveal details on the casualties.

Rosatom’s nuclear energy is cheap and helps countries to diversify their supply, but Russia’s state energy giant can potentially use this dependence for espionage, blackmail and avoiding sanctions.

French-owned nuclear company Framatome signed a contract with Rosatom to co-produce nuclear fuel for water-water energetic reactors (WWER or VVER), Olena Lapenko from think tank DiXi Group told Kyiv Post in an interview.

Framatome is executing a scale-up to produce nuclear fuel as part of joint venture with Rosatom, the State Atomic Energy Corporation of Russia. The fuel will be produced in a Framatome-owned factory in Lingen, Germany.

Kremlin tries to shift blame to Ukraine after its KAB glide bomb hit a boarding school being used as a nursing home for Russian residents of Sudzha, in Russia’s Kursk region.

Kyiv and Moscow traded blame on Sunday for a strike on a school in a Ukrainian-occupied town in Russia’s Kursk region, while Kyiv also said weekend missile and drone attacks killed at least 15 people in Ukraine.

Fighting in the nearly three-year war has shown no signs of de-escalating, despite US President Donald Trump’s promise to enact a ceasefire within “24 hours” of taking office on Jan. 20.

Latest from the Institute for the Study of War.

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

Russian forces conducted a large-scale series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of January 31 to February 1.
A recent Russian drone strike on a Ukrainian naval drone suggests that Russian forces have developed a new method to offset Ukrainian capabilities in the Black Sea.
Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Toretsk, and Russian forces recently advanced near Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, and Kurakhove.

Ignoring lessons from history and playing recklessly with their own circumstances, the Pan African Parliament should not be demonstrating tacit recognition of occupied Ukrainian territories.

At the height of “grand apartheid,” the South African government under HF Verwoerd produced a diabolical scheme to grant independence to ten ‘homelands’ – Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Ciskei, Venda, Gazankulu, KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, KwaZulu, Lebowa, and QwaQwa. 

You may never have heard or read of these territories. That’s because they disappeared almost as quickly as they appeared, even though the damage done still lingers to this day.

On the evening of Feb. 1, a Russian KAB glide bomb hit a boarding school being used to house elderly and infirm Russian residents of the Ukrainian-controlled town of Sudzha, in Russia’s Kursk region.

Kursk activist Vladimir Sinelnikov was cited by Astra on Telegram as saying that Russian aerospace forces dropped an aircraft bomb on a former boarding school in the Kursk town of Sudzha that was being used to house elderly and bedridden Russian residents of the town. He said the building was virtually destroyed and more than 90 residents, who it had not been possible to evacuate after Ukraine’s August incursion, were trapped under the rubble.

Shortly afterward the press officer of the Ukrainian Ground Forces commander in Kursk, Alexey Dmytrashkivskyi confirmed the attack and issued a statement on Facebook that said:

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