Here's what it looked like on Thursday, January 16th:

struggle

• The Ukrainian Air Force claimed that Russia attacked its western region with 43 cruise and ballistic missiles and 74 drones.
• Russian authorities confirmed the attack, saying it was a response to Kiev's air strikes on Russian army factories and energy centers using US ATACMS missiles and British-made Storm Shadow missiles.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has condemned recent Russian attacks on the country's energy sector, calling on foreign allies to provide more security assistance and allow Kyiv to use nearly $250 billion in seized Russian assets to buy weapons.
• Russian regional governor Alexander Gusev said debris falling from a destroyed Ukrainian drone sparked a fire at an oil storage facility in southern Russia. No casualties were reported.

regional security

• Russia and Iran are expected to sign a partnership treaty that will guide their relationship for the next 20 years. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshki are scheduled to hold talks on the issue in Moscow on Friday.

Politics and Diplomacy

• President Zelensky says 25 Ukrainians - including some who fought at the Yazovstal steel plant in Mariupol - which was eventually seized by Russia in 2022, were killed as part of a prisoner exchange deal — will return “home to Ukraine.”
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a news conference that Russia was planning "acts of terrorism" against Poland and other countries.
• Zelensky said he expected U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to continue supporting Ukraine's military capabilities against Russia after he takes office next week.

• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on allies to "shift to a wartime mindset" in the current global situation. "To prevent war, we need to be prepared," he said.
• Trump's advisers reportedly admit that resolving the war in Ukraine will take months, if not longer. Trump promised to reach a peace agreement on his first day in the White House.
• They also support scrapping Ukraine's possibility of joining NATO, freezing the country's current battle lines and creating a demilitarized zone patrolled by European troops.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he could only finance an additional $3.1 billion in weapons shipments to Ukraine through separate borrowing because otherwise "the money would be gone."

Russian oil and gas

• Moldova's pro-Moscow independence leader Vadim Krasnoselski said Transnistria expected Russia to resume "humanitarian gas" supplies to the region to provide heat and electricity to ordinary people and industrial businesses .