
Russia and Ukraine exchanged attacks on each other's capitals in the early hours of Thursday, a day after peace talks ended and just before US envoys arrived in Moscow, where they will meet with President Vladimir Putin.
Kirill Dmitriev, Putin's envoy, received US negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff at Moscow's Vnukovo airport, ahead of their meeting with the Kremlin leader, scheduled to take place later in the day.
"Welcome Steve and Jared to Moscow," Dmitriev wrote on the social network X, posting a photo of himself shaking hands with Witkoff next to a plane on a cold, gray winter morning, while Kushner stood next to them.
After leaving Moscow, the American negotiators plan to travel to Ireland, where they will meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is expected to attend a meeting of European leaders.
With its ballistic missile attacks, Russia has damaged energy infrastructure in the Shepetivka district of the Khmelnytskyi administrative region, causing power outages.
"As a result of the Russian attack, energy infrastructure has been damaged, causing an emergency power outage in the Shepetivka district," Serhii Tyurin, the governor of the Khmelnytskyi region, said in a message published on Telegram.
Following the Russian attack, a fire also broke out in the western region of Ukraine.
Overnight, Russia also hit six important electrical substations in the Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad, Zhytomyr and Cherkasy regions, damaging power lines and disrupting electricity supplies across the country.
Meanwhile, a colonel in the Russian Armed Forces was killed this morning when his car exploded in Shushary, on the southern outskirts of St. Petersburg. A family member who was in the car with him survived. It is suspected that the explosives were activated remotely.
So far, no further details have been provided on the identity of the colonel killed this morning, nor on the possible perpetrators of the assassination.
Ukraine will receive a 13th aid package from Italy. Yesterday, the Minister of Economy and Finance, Giancarlo Giorgetti, signed the interministerial decree yesterday evening.