Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will host security talks in Kyiv on January 3 with Western partners as Moscow kept up its aerial barrage of Ukraine, including 95 overnight drone strikes.
Ukraine’s Air Force said it intercepted 80 of the drones and reported no casualties, but an earlier strike on January 2 that hit a residential area of the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv injured more than 31 people and killed two, including a 3-year-old child.
The strikes and security talks come amid a flurry of US-backed efforts to push for an end to the nearly four-year war in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy will be joined by representatives from 15 European Union and NATO countries for the talks in Kyiv, including a US delegation that will join over video link, and the discussions follow weeks of stepped-up initiatives and pressure from Washington to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
US President Donald Trump has said notable progress has taken place but that “one or two very thorny, very tough issues” remain before each side is willing to sign off on the 20-point plan pushed by Washington. Two of those prominent issues are how to allocate territory in eastern Ukraine and the fate of Europe’s biggest nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhya, which is currently occupied by Russia.
Zelenskyy is set to meet European leaders in France on January 6 to discuss a potential peace deal and the latest from the battlefield in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy Reshuffles Top Officials Ahead Of Key Talks
Against that backdrop, the Ukrainian president named military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov as his new top aide on January 2.
Once formally appointed, he will replace Andriy Yermak, a Zelenskyy confidante and prominent powerbroker who resigned in November after investigators raided his house as part of a sweeping corruption probe.
Budanov has built up a strong reputation in Ukraine, credited with a series of daring operations against Russia.
Analysts say Zelenskyy aims to use the appointment to help restore trust in his leadership and state institutions and strengthen Ukraine’s defenses against Russia and its hand in US-backed peace talks.
“Kyrylo has specialized experience in these areas and sufficient strength to deliver results,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.
In a statement, Budanov said he had accepted the offer and would focus on the “strategic security of our state.”
Zelenskyy also announced that he intends to replace Denys Shymhal as defense minister with Mykhaylo Fedorov, who is now minister of digital transformation.
“Mykhaylo is deeply involved in issues related to drones and is very effective in the digitalization of state services and processes,” the Ukrainian president said.
While Russian battlefield advancements have been limited and hard-fought since the first year of the full-scale war in Ukraine, a January 2 analysis from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, found that Moscow’s battlefield gains in 2025 were the highest since 2022.
The Russian Army captured more than 5,600 square kilometers, a total equivalent to more than the previous two years combined. The amount of territory is still far short of the more than 60,000 square kilometers Russia took in 2022 following its full-scale invasion.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskiy said those gains resulted in almost 420,000 dead and wounded Russians in 2025, according to Ukrainian estimates.