War in Ukraine: negotiations envisaged, end of the war within “two months”, capture of a Ukrainian city… an update on the situation

Every day, Midi Libre takes stock of the situation in Ukraine. This Tuesday, January 28, 2025, discover the latest news about this conflict

Negotiations are possible

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that his country was ready to negotiate to end the conflict in Ukraine, while rejecting direct discussions with Volodymyr Zelensky and saying he saw no “will” from kyiv.

Russia is open to talks but sees no “will”on the Ukrainian side, Vladimir Putin assured in an interview on state television, rejecting for the time being direct discussions with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, whom he considers “illegitimate”.

Without Western aid

Russian President Vladimir Putin assured on Tuesday that the conflict in Ukraine would end within “two months” without military aid from Ukraine's Western allies, which fears a drastic reduction in American assistance with the return to power of Donald Trump.

“They cannot exist, they will not last a month if the money and, in general, the ammunition runs out. It would all be over in a month and a half or two months”, he said in an interview with Russian state television.

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Village in the region

The Russian army claimed Tuesday the capture of the village of Dvoritchna, in the Kharkiv region (northeast), a new advance on the western bank of the Oskil River, which illustrates Kiev's difficulties in containing enemy troops. Ukrainian forces, despite the losses inflicted on Russian soldiers, have also been in retreat for months on many sectors of the Eastern Front, in particular around Pokrovsk, Toretsk and Chassiv Yar.

“Units of the Western group of troops have liberated the town of Dvourechnaya”(Dvorichna in Ukrainian), the Russian Defense Ministry said. Before the start of the 2022 offensive against Ukraine, the town had about 3,500 inhabitants. In early January, Russian forces managed to establish a bridgehead by crossing the Oskil, a river in eastern Ukraine and a natural obstacle that separated the positions of the two sides in this sector. They are now advancing into the western part of the Kharkiv region, from which they were driven out in the fall of 2022 during a lightning Ukrainian counteroffensive. The town of Dvoritchna was thus under occupation at the start of the attack in February 2022, before being retaken by kyiv a few months later, in September.

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Kremlin troops are now just a few kilometers from Kupiansk, a city with a population of about 25,000 before the war and the main Ukrainian stronghold in the area. Kiev’s troops are also struggling in the eastern Donetsk region, where the Kremlin’s army is steadily advancing, bit by bit, despite heavy human and material losses. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian grouping of forces Khortytsia, which is fighting in the area, reported that “intense fighting continues in the urban areas of Chassiv Yar and Toretsk”, two cities at the heart of clashes for months. According to this source, the enemy is conducting sustained artillery bombardments on Ukrainian fortifications in these areas.

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The Ukrainian military analyst group DeepState indicates that Russian forces have advanced in the north and center of Chassiv Yar, a strategic city located on high ground that had 12,000 inhabitants before February 2022. In addition, nine people were injured in nighttime Russian attacks on the cities of Odessa (south) and Kharkiv, according to local authorities. The Ukrainian Air Force claimed to have shot down 65 drones over 13 regions. Among those killed were four people in Odessa, including a 91-year-old man who was hospitalized, in a drone attack, regional governor Oleg Kiper said. Two more people, including a nine-year-old girl, were injured in Kharkiv when a drone attack caused a major fire at a business, according to the local Ukrainian prosecutor’s office. A Russian drone attack also injured three people in a village near Kharkiv, the source said.