Stay on top of Russia-Ukraine war 02-02-2025 developments on the ground with KyivPost fact-based news, exclusive video footage, photos and updated war maps.
Ukrainians are watching the slow, steady Russian troop advances in Donbas while talking Trump’s latest orders: a 90-day suspension of USAID grants awaiting an audit of cash already spent.
This week, Ukrainians have continued to monitor the slow but steady advance of Russian troops in Donbas while actively discussing one of Trump’s latest orders: a 90-day suspension of USAID grant program pending a full audit of funds already spent. At the same time, the US has temporarily closed its doors to Ukrainian refugees.
On social networks, there was some sympathy for people trying to enter or remain in the US as refugees, but the suspension of funding for USAID grants provoked almost wild enthusiasm in part of Ukrainian society.
The world in focus, as seen by Canadian leading global affairs analyst Michael Bociurkiw in a quick review of the biggest news in international media today.
Donald Trump launched a trade war against Canada on Saturday by imposing a 25 per cent tariff on virtually all goods from this country — an unprecedented strike against a longstanding ally that has the potential to throw the economy into a tailspin. Trump’s long-threatened plan to inflict economic pain on Canada has materialized on the day he said it would, and it includes a 10 per cent tariff on Canadian energy products, according to a fact sheet from the White House sent to CBC News. Trump is also levying tariffs of 25 per cent on all Mexican goods and 10 per cent on goods from China.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced late Saturday the federal government will hit back against the U.S. after President Donald Trump launched a trade war this weekend with punitive tariffs on all Canadian goods. Trudeau said Canada won’t stand for an attack from a country that was supposed to be an ally and friend. To start, Canada will slap 25 per cent tariffs on $30 billion worth of American goods coming into Canada as of Tuesday. The tariffs will then be applied to another $125 billion worth of American imports in three weeks’ time. The prime minister said American liquor like beer, wine and spirits, vegetables, clothing, shoes and perfume will be among the first items to face Canadian retaliatory tariffs. Canada will also put tariffs on American consumer products such as household appliances, furniture and sports equipment - CBC
Following the Jan. 29 crash anti-LGBTQ bloggers and Russian media “identified” the pilot as a transitioned National Guard pilot who was undergoing training on the UH-60 at the time.
On Jan 29 there was a mid-air collision between a Bombardier CRJ700 airliner and a US Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk over the Potomac River close to Washington’s Ronald Reagan Airport.
The independent Russian news site Insider.ru reported in its Anti-Fake column that in the days following the tragedy Russian media gleefully reported that the pilot of the military helicopter was transgender.
Kyiv Post speaks to Anastasiia Klipachenko, Head of the UAF Women’s and Girls’ Football Committee, who shares how sport can serve as a vehicle for diplomacy.
In an exclusive interview, Anastasiia Klipachenko, Head of the UAF Women’s and Girls’ Football Committee, a world beach soccer champion, international master of sports, and player for the Ukraine national futsal and beach soccer teams, shares her vision of the development of Ukrainian women’s football in wartime, the unique “Way of Champions” sports project, and sports diplomacy.
Latest from the British Defence Intelligence.
White House 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 Kellogg told Reuters in an interview that elections “need to be done,” especially if Kyiv can agree a truce with Russia in the coming months.
While von Ursula von der Leyen has not hesitated to express support for “the Georgian people fighting for democracy,” she has remained remarkably quiet about the uprising in Serbia.
Student protests against corruption are growing in Serbia, but EU institutions, for which Vučić’s regime is considered a key partner in the Balkans, have so far refrained from expressing support for the demonstrators.
On Thursday morning, 500 Serbian students set off on foot from Belgrade under the slogan “One step for justice.” After an 80-kilometer march, they reached Novi Sad to join Saturday’s blockade of three bridges over the Danube.
Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko has shot down Washington’s call for wartime elections in Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s principal domestic political opponent, his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, has firmly rejected the idea of holding new elections in Ukraine during wartime.
The leader of the European Solidarity party is convinced that beginning electoral processes in Ukraine while Ukraine is at war will undermine internal unity and only benefit the Russian enemy, his party’s official website reported on Jan. 30.
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.
After several years, Putin’s missile that “has no analogs in the world” is no nearer becoming operational. Many believe this is because Russia lacks the necessary know-how to make it happen.
A report by Business Insider, citing Timothy Wright a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, says that Russia’s struggles to commission its new RS-28 Sarmat (NATO: SS-X-29/30 Satan II) nuclear capable inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) is because Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and parts of the Donbas resulted in the loss of the Ukrainian expertise it depended on.
Wright said that historically, much of the ICBM design and manufacturing facilities and personnel were based in Ukraine, particularly that relating to liquid fuel systems. For more than 20 years following its independence the Ukrainian defense industry worked with and alongside that of Russia, which came to rely on Kyiv’s nuclear and missile technology.
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.
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.”
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.
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:
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: