Ukraine-Russia war latest: Putin accused of ‘terrorist attack’ after Russian drones strike bus killing 12 miners

Russian security council secretary Sergei Shoigu has reassured senior Chinese official Wang Yi of Moscow’s continuing support to Beijing over Taiwan.

Russia has repeatedly said it opposes Taiwan’s independence in any form and considers the self-governed island an inseparable part of China.

“We see that China’s ill‑wishers continue to destabilise the situation in the Taiwan Strait. For our part, I want to reaffirm our consistent and unwavering support for Beijing on the Taiwan issue,” Shoigu said, reported TASS news agency.

“We proceed from the fact that the government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government representing all of China,” he added.

China and Russia have forged close ties in recent years and declared a “no limits” strategic partnership days before Russian president Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has vowed to “reunite” the self-governed island with the mainland by force, if necessary, and the US is bound by treaty to help arm Taipei to defend itself from attack.

Ukraine’s defence minister has said only authorised Starlink terminals will be allowed to operate in the war-hit nation as the forces look to counter Moscow’s use of satellite internet on attack drones.

Mykhailo Fedorov said Ukraine is working together with the Elon Musk’s satellite internet technology and has already taken the initial steps in countering Russia’s drone opertions.

“The next step is to implement a system that will allow only authorised terminals to operate in Ukraine,” he said.

The newly appointed defence minister said the Ukrainian users will get to register their Starlink terminals for verification in the coming dyas and those that fail to get verification, will be disconnected.

“The registration process will be simple, fast, and convenient for users. Detailed instructions will be published shortly,” Fedorov said, thanking Starlink and SpaceX for their cooperation and support.

Estonia has warned against Russia’s thousands of ex-combatants entering Europe’s Schengen area, stating their battle-hardened criminal past that could wage a hybrid war in the European Union.

“The same war that saw civilians executed in broad daylight in Bucha has produced battle-hardened fighters who pose a direct threat to Europe’s internal security. Russian ex-combatants must be kept out of the Schengen Area,” Estonia’s foreign minister Margus Tsahkna said.

He has claimed that the Kremlin is planning to dispatch “ex-prisoners and rapists” to wage a hybrid war in the European Union and called for a blanket ban on Russian soldiers who fought in Ukraine.

“Russia and Putin are already using different people to commit attacks on our societies, but when there will be peace, we can imagine that we will have hundreds of thousands of ex-combatants coming to Europe,” he said.

A Russian drone strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro hit a bus carrying mineworkers and killed at least a dozen people, Ukrainian authorities said on Sunday.

The strike injured several more people and sparked a fire that was subsequently put out, according to the emergency services.

DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said it owned the bus and accused Russia of carrying out “a large-scale terrorist attack on DTEK mines in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” whose capital is Dnipro.

“The epicenter of one of the attacks was a company bus transporting miners from the enterprise after a shift in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” the company said in a Telegram post.

The strike came days after US president Donald Trump said the Kremlin had agreed to temporarily halt the targeting of the Ukrainian capital and other cities, as the region suffers under freezing temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to Ukrainians.

Russian, Ukrainian and US officials are set to hold the second round of trilateral talks on Wednesday this week to discuss a US-drafted plan to end the war on Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky said.

The talks were earlier scheduled to take place on Sunday but no reason has been provided from either side for the delay.

“The dates for the next trilateral meetings have been set – February 4 and 5 in Abu Dhabi,” Zelensky said. Officials from Russia and the US are yet to confirm the new dates.

“Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” the Ukrainian war-time leader said.

This comes as the US says it is “very close” to brokering a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine but negotiations have hit a deadlock over the issue of Russia-occupied territory in a post-war scenario.

A key political ally of Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine has called for a peace deal which prioritises people over land ahead of a major conference in the war torn country on Thursday.

Vitaliy Kim, governor of the Mykolaiv Oblast region in Ukraine, is an emerging name in Ukrainian politics and spoke to The Independent as other governors and mayors get together to discuss where the peace line needs to be drawn in the war with Russia.

The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides of Russia’s war on Ukraine could hit two million by the spring, a report has warned.

It would mean Russia suffering the largest number of troop deaths recorded for any major power in any conflict since the Second World War.

The study by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies revealed the slow, deadly grind of the conflict, and comes before the fourth anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.

The report said Russia suffered 1.2 million casualties, including up to 325,000 troop deaths, between February 2022 and December 2025. “No major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war since World War II,” the authors said.

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that February will be a “period of quite intense foreign policy activity” as he expects the US to be as active as Ukraine in its de-escalation measures.

Trilateral negotiations, meant to take place in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, have been delayed to next week.

Zelensky announced the postponement just hours before Russia launched deadly strikes that hit a bus in the Dnipro region and killed 15 people.

In a post on social media on Sunday night, the president said: “Today’s Russian drone strike on an ordinary bus carrying miners in the Dnipro region is a telling crime that yet again shows that Russia bears responsibility for the escalation. Evil must be stopped.

“There is an arrangement to hold a trilateral meeting at an appropriate level in the Emirates next week. February will be a period of quite intense foreign policy activity.

“We expect the American side to be just as active, particularly when it comes to de-escalation measures – reducing strikes. Much depends on what the U.S. can achieve so that people trust both the process and the outcomes.”

Ukraine is receiving two lorries worth of potatoes after Berlin experienced a bumper harvest year with its biggest crop in more than two decades.

The phenomenon has inspired a potato dump in Berlin, as farmers, not wanting their produce to go to waste, have given away their potatoes away to soup kitchens, schools, churches, and the public.

Two lorries worth of spuds have also been delivered to Ukraine.

It comes as the country experiences a brutal winter, with temperatures in some areas dropping to -30C.

Russia has been repeatedly targeting Ukraine’s energy grid, leaving thousands of Ukrainians without power or food.