Belarusian leaders Alexander Lukashenko visits a polling station in Minsk, January 26, 2025 (Reuters)


Sunday’s Coverage: US Diplomats Push to Exempt Kyiv from Trump’s Aid Freeze


Map: Institute for the Study of War


UPDATE 1332 GMT:

The head of Ukrainian military intelligence, Kirill Budanov, has reportedly told Ukraine’s Parliament that the country’s existence depends on holding negotiations before the summer.

A deputy of the Verkhovna Rada said Budanov was asked a a closed-door meeting, How much time do we still have?”

The intelligence chief replied, “If there are no serious negotiations before the summer, then very dangerous processes for the very existence of Ukraine may begin.”

The deputy said, “Everyone looked at each other and fell silent. Apparently, everything needs to work out.”

Meanwhile, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has replaced the head of a key military command in the east.


UPDATE 1316 GMT:

On the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky pays tribute to Holocaust victims at Babyn Yar in Kyiv.

Nazi troops murders murdered 33,000 Jews at the Babyn Yar ravine on September 29-30, 1941.

Zelensky will join Holocaust commemoration ceremonies in Poland today.


UPDATE 1218 GMT:

European Union Foreign Ministers have agreed the extension of sanctions over Vladimir Putin’s 35-month invasion of Ukraine.

Foreign policy head Kaja Kallas posted:

Hungary, led by Putin ally Viktor Orbán, had threatened to block the extension. Budapest dropped its objection after receiving an assurance of “energy guarantees” from the EU.

Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, “The European Commission is committed to protecting natural gas and oil pipelines leading to European Union member states. They made it clear that the integrity of the energy infrastructure supplying EU member states is a matter of security for the entire EU.”

He claimed the European Commission will ask Kyiv to maintain the oil transit through its territory. Ukraine refused to extend the contract with Russian State firm Gazprom beyond January 1 because of Putin’s invasion.


UPDATE 1208 GMT:

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky claims the Ukrainian military now comprises 880,000 personnel, facing an assault by 600,000 Russian soldiers.

At a joint press conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw, Zelensky said, “Russian troops are concentrated in several areas, so in some areas, they have a quantitative advantage.”

Ukraine has faced issues of mobilization, amid Russia’s gradual advance in a 15-month offensive in the Donetsk region in the east of the country.

The Government has resisted lowering the mobilization age below 25, while military leaders are being criticized for transfer of air defense personnel to infantry units.


UPDATE 1156 GMT:

Four civilians were killed and at least 12 injured by Russian attacks across Ukraine over the past day.

Two women were killed in Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region in northeast Ukraine. One person was slain in the neighboring Donetsk region, and one in the Kherson region in the south.

Air defenses downed 57 of 104 drone launched by the Russians over 10 regions. Another 39 decoy drones were lost to electronic counter-measures.


UPDATE 1150 GMT:

The Swedish Coast Guard has detained the Malta-flagged Vezhan on suspicion of damaging an undersea fiber optic cable (see 0434 GMT).

Prosecutors have launched an investigation. The Vezhen left the Russian port of Ust-Luga several days earlier and was navigating near the site of damage to the cable of the Latvian State Radio and Television Broadcasting Center.


UPDATE 1135 GMT:

More Western leaders have challenged the legitimacy of Belarus autocrat Alexander Lukashenko’s “election”.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the vote was a “bitter day for all those who long for freedom and democracy”.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski mocked the official declaration that Lukashenko won “only” 87% of the vote. “Will the rest fit inside the prisons?”

In contrast, Vladimir Putin congratulated his ally for a “confident victory”.


UPDATE 0509 GMT:

Ukraine’s General Staff says drone strikes have destroyed more than 200 Iran-type drones in Russian storage facilities.

The UAVs hit the site in the Oryol Region in western Russia on Sunday, targeting concrete structures housing thermobaric warheads and causing a significant secondary detonation.

“The results and extent of the damage are being specified, but it is preliminary known that more than 200 ‘Shaheds’ will no longer be used against our country,” the General Staff said.


UPDATE 0456 GMT:

Amid Russia’s latest drone attack across Ukraine, explosions have been heard in the western cities of Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytskyi.

In Dnipro in south-central Ukraine, a multi-story residential building and nearby vehicles have been damaged.


UPDATE 0434 GMT:

Another undersea cable in northern Europe has been damaged, probably as a result of external influence, amid suspected Russian sabotage operations.

The fiber optic cable, linking the Latvian city of Ventspils with Sweden’s Gotland Island, was damaged in Sweden’s exclusive economic zone on Sunday.

Afterwards, NATO deployed patrol ships and Swedish authorities started an investigation.

“We are now carrying out a number of concrete investigative measures, but I cannot go into what they consist of due to the ongoing preliminary investigation,” senior prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist said.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said his country was cooperating closely with Latvia and NATO: “Sweden will contribute important capabilities to the ongoing effort to investigate the suspected incident.”

After an extraordinary government meeting, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa told reporters, “We have determined that there is most likely external damage and that it is significant.”

Latvia’s navy said it had dispatched a patrol boat to inspect a ship and two other vessels are subject to investigation.

NATO said, “NATO ships and aircrafts are working together with national resources from the Baltic Sea countries to investigate and, if necessary, take action.”

The 32-nation bloc said last week it would deploy frigates, patrol aircraft, and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure and reserved the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat.

Last month Finnish police seized a tanker carrying Russian oil, suspecting it of damaging the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.


ORIGINAL ENTRY: Alexander Lukashenko, an ally of Vladimir Putin, has “won” a seventh term as Belarus leader with a proclaimed 86.8% of the vote.

As in Russia, all opposition candidates pledged loyalty to the autocrat, who has been in charge of Belarus since 1994.

There is no alternative to Alexander Lukashenko as the leader of our country,” said one of the four other candidates, the Communist Party’s Sergei Syrankov, ahead of the vote. “So, we are taking part in the election with the president’s team.”

Syrankov was officially second with 3.2% of the vote.

In 2020, fraudulent elections spurred mass protests that were only quelled by brutal repression. But public reaction this time has been muted.

More than 500,000 people have fled Belarus since the 2020 “election”.

See also World Unfiltered Video — Can Belarus Triumph Over Lukashenko?

Art Balenok, a Belarus activist living in Austria, said on Sunday:

This whole thing [resistance to Lukashenko] has been pushed down, repressed so badly, that doing something from within the country at the moment is not possible.

If you go out and start protesting, you’ll be thrown in jail. Maybe you’ll come out one day. Maybe not.

Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, whose husband and fellow activist Sergei Tikhanovsky has been held incommunicado for almost a year, wrote from Poland’s capital Warsaw on Sunday:

But Tsikhanouskaya’s economic advisor Aleś Alachnovič reflected:

People feel that the costs of protest increase while the benefits of protest decrease. They don’t see that right now their votes or their actions can change anything.

Lukashenko and his forces, they can kill people, they can arrest people, they can close businesses of people who are disloyal and everything else.

“Neither Free Nor Fair”

The European Union, UK, and US do not recognize Lukashenko’s government as legitimate.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas posted on Saturday:

The EU Commissioner for Enlargement, Marta Kos, followed up, “Today’s sham election in Belarus has been neither free nor fair. The people of Belarus deserve a real say in who governs their country.”

In a joint statement, Kallas and Kos assured, “The EU is on the side of the Belarusian people and our support in their quest for a free, democratic, sovereign and independent Belarus, as part of a peaceful and prosperous Europe, is unwavering.”

Hungary Blocks Joint EU Statement

Hungary, led by Putin ally Viktor Orbán, blocked a joint EU statement rejecting the Belarusian outcome, officials said in Brussels.

Slovakia initially joined Hungary but later agreed to support the text, which described the elections as lacking legitimacy due to “relentless and unprecedented repression of human rights” and severe restrictions on opposition and independent media.

Without the necessary unanimous, Kallas and Kos issued their statement that the election was “neither free nor fair”. Kallas also called on Belarusian authorities to release all political prisoners, “over a thousand of whom are arbitrarily detained, including an employee of the Delegation of the European Union”.

She emphasized that Belarus’s role in Russia’s war against Ukraine and Moscow’s hybrid attacks on neighboring countries justifies continued EU sanctions and restrictions on the regime in Minsk.