Russian forces have entered the Donetsk Oblast town of Velyka Novosilka, according to Russian and Ukrainian sources. The settlement is Ukraine’s last major stronghold in the southern Donbas region. Located at the intersection of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, its capture could provide Russian forces with a potential route for advancement into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Ukrainian military analysts say, according to Euromaidan Press.
“Military personnel of the ‘Vostok’ group continue to hack into the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Velyka Novosilka,” the Russian MoD claimed on Telegram. “Servicemen from the ‘East’ military group installed the Russian flag on one of the buildings recaptured from the enemy in the center of the settlement.”
The Ukrainian DeepState open-source tracking group confirmed that assessment, saying “The enemy is successful in advancing on the eastern outskirts, and has also occupied a small part of the central streets of the settlement, where they filmed their videos with rags.”
Video emerged on social media appearing to back up that claim.
Like Ukraine, Russia sees this as a key part of the battlefield.
“Velyka Novosilka is the last large, well-prepared line of defense and logistics hub of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the South Donetsk direction,” the MoD stated.
Though the Russians are in the middle of the settlement, fighting for its control still rages. A day earlier, a Ukrainian military official expressed concern that the settlement could be encircled.
“The Russians are conducting mixed assaults, using both infantry and equipment,” said Viktor Tregubov, a representative of the Ukrainian Khortysya operational-strategic group, according to Radio Liberty. “There are actually a lot of problems there. Velyka Novosilka is now in a rather difficult situation.”
The situation is “dynamic, difficult,” he added, because “the Russians have a large quantitative advantage, in particular, in personnel.”
Making matters worse, the geographical layout of the area, including a river that cuts through the village, complicates defensive maneuvers, Trehubov noted. As part of its effort to surround Velyka Novosilka, Russian troops are attempting to take control of access routes to the village through heavy fire, he added.
Though the town is imperiled, some well-regarded Russian milbloggers say tough fighting remains.
“It is too early to talk about the liberation of the village, but the enemy no longer has a coherent defense,” Oleg Sarov said on Telegram. “Fighting is going on throughout the village, the enemy is holding a number of concrete pillboxes, but Russian attack aircraft are gradually advancing. The controlled territory in the center is expanding, the flag is raised over the stadium in the eastern part.”
While the Russians are making grinding advances across the eastern part of Ukraine, officials in Kyiv are particularly concerned that the fall of Velyka Novosilka could have a cascading effect. A Russian advance into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which is solidly controlled by Ukraine, will further complicate Ukraine’s ability to defend its eastern region.
This all comes as both sides are jockeying for position ahead of any possible ceasefire negotiations engineered by U.S. President Donald Trump. You can read more about that later in this story.
The Latest
Russian forces continue to have slow, halting momentum across most of the eastern front while making no gains to the south. Here are some of the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.
- Kursk: Russian forces recently advanced in the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast amid continued fighting in the area on Jan. 23.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Kharkiv direction on Jan. 23 but did not advance.
- Luhansk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Lyman, Kupyansk and Borova directions on Jan. 23 but did not make confirmed advances.
- Donetsk: Russian forces continued limited ground attacks near and in Kurakhove, Chasiv Yar, southeast of Siversk near Ivano-Darivka on Jan. 23 but did not advance. However, they recently gained ground in northern Toretsk and southwest of the town as well as southwest of Pokrovsk.
- Zaporizhzhia: Neither Russian nor Ukrainian sources reported ground activity in western Zaporizhia Oblast on Jan. 23.
- Kherson: Russian forces continued limited ground attacks in the Dnipro direction in Kherson Oblast on Jan. 22 and 23 with no advances reported.
Even though Russia continues cutting into Ukraine’s salient in the Kursk region, Ukraine’s military commander-in-chief said success there offers hope there may be more such offensive efforts in the future.
“The year was very tense. It took place in conditions of constant active actions of the enemy, they attacked, we defended,” Oleksandr Syrskyi told Radio Bayraktar. “But we also had some good news when we conducted a successful counter-offensive, an offensive operation in the Kursk sector, which greatly motivated our military personnel… And gave us hope that this offensive will not be the last.”
The main conclusion of the Kursk operation, Syrskyi added, is the need to prepare not only for defense but also for offense.
To address its huge need for additional troops, Ukraine is in the final stages of drafting recruitment reforms to attract 18- to 25-year-olds currently exempt from mobilization, the battlefield commander recently appointed to the President’s Office said, according to The Associated Press.
Deputy Head of the Office of the President Colonel Pavlo Palisa, speaking for the first time since assuming the position, said Ukraine is exploring new recruitment options because the current drafting system inherited from Soviet times is hindering progress.
“While Ukraine passed a mobilization law last spring and lowered the age of conscription from 27 to 25 years old, the measures have not had the impact needed to replenish its ranks or replace battlefield losses in its war with Russia,” the AP noted.
The issue has been a huge point of contention with the U.S. and allies, who have urged Zelensky to increase the pool of recruits. However, even Ukrainian troops are beginning to wonder if this will be too little, too late.
Ukraine carried out a massive drone attack on 12 regions in Russia and one on territory Moscow’s forces occupy, the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) claimed. A total of 121 drones were intercepted and destroyed, the MoD stated, while Ukraine claims the attack caused widespread damage.
The Russian MoD says that Ukraine struck Bryansk, Ryazan, Kursk, Saratov, Rostov, Moscow, Belgorod, Voronezh, Tula, Oryol, Lipetsk and Crimea.
The drones sparked fires at the Ryazan Oil Processing Company and the Ryazan oil pumping station and damage to the Kremniy El microelectronics plant in Russia’s Bryansk Oblast, according to the Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff.
“The plant produces a wide range of microchips and components used in strategically important weaponry systems,” the General Staff stated. “In particular, in the rocket complexes “Topol-M” and ‘Bulava,” anti-aircraft missile systems C-300 and C-400, as well as in onboard electronics of combat aircraft.”
There was also “damage to the Ryazan Thermal Power Plant, the Investigative Committee building on Krasnoarmeyskaya Street in Bryansk, and the building of the Institute of Management and Business on 2-aya Pochepskaya Street (also located in Bryansk),” the ASTRA news outlet reported on Telegram. In addition, “ASTRA sources report that three tanks and a kerosene production unit were damaged at the Ryazan Oil Refinery.”
Highlighting the significance of petroleum as both a key war materiel and an economic driver, President Donald Trump urged Saudi Arabia to drop the price of oil to place additional strains on a Russian economy already reeling from the war. Russia is a major producer of petroleum products.
“If the price came down, the Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” Trump posited. “Right now that price is high enough that the war will continue.”
Echoing sentiments expressed by Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the invasion of Ukraine might have never happened if the Republican was in the White House at the time.
“I cannot but agree with him that if he had been president – if his victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020 – then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that emerged in 2022,” the Russian leader suggested to a reporter on Friday.
Putin also lavished praise on Trump, extolling their relationship and blaming former President Joe Biden for not agreeing to meet with him.
On Wednesday, Trump asserted on his Truth Social social media platform that there would have been no war had he been president at the time.
Trump also lashed out at Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian president is partly to blame for the war.
“He wants to settle now, he’s had enough,” Trump said of the Ukrainian leader in an interview with Fox News. “He shouldn’t have allowed this to happen either … He’s no angel, but he shouldn’t have allowed this war to happen.”
During the interview, Trump chided Zelensky for taking on a much bigger enemy.
“First of all, he’s fighting a much bigger entity, okay, much bigger when he was, you know, talking so brave,” Trump stated. “So now two things happened. They were brave, but we gave them billions of dollars. The United States spent $200 billion more than Europe. Why did we spend more? You know why? Because Biden never asked Europe to spend more.”
Instead of fighting, Trump suggested that Zelensky should have made a deal with Russia.
“Zelensky was fighting a much bigger entity, much bigger, much more powerful,” Trump posited. “He shouldn’t have done that, because we could have made a deal, and it would have been a deal that would have been, it would have been a nothing deal. I could have made that deal so easily. And Zelensky decided that ‘I want to fight.’”
“You know, they have 30,000 army tanks. Russia has 30,000 army tanks,” Trump continued. “Zelensky had none practically. Then we started pouring equipment, pour and pour and pour. And they had the bravery to use the equipment. But in the end, this has to be settled.”
However, Trump also suggested he could levy additional sanctions on Russia if Putin doesn’t come to the bargaining table for a ceasefire.
“Sounds likely,” he said in a terse response when asked by a reporter if he would take such a step.
During any future talks with Trump, Putin will demand that Ukraine cut its ties with NATO and become “a neutral state with a limited military,” Bloomberg reported.
The Kremlin accepts that individual NATO nations can continue to send weapons to Ukraine as part of bilateral security agreements, but those weapons “should not be used against Russia or to recapture territory,” one of the sources told Bloomberg.
During a fiery speech at Davos earlier this week, Zelensky urged Europe to do more to take care of itself.
“Most of the world’s now thinking – so, what’s gonna happen to their relationship with America?” Zelensky asked rhetorically. “What will happen to alliances? To support? To trade? How does President Trump plan to end wars? But no one is asking these kinds of questions about Europe. And we need to be honest about that.”
“Europe can’t afford to be second or third in line for its allies,” he added. “If that happens, the world will start moving forward without Europe, and that’s a world that won’t be comfortable or beneficial for Europeans.”
After leading his country through nearly three years of war, Zelensky is seeing his star sheen wear off and is facing a tough reelection.
“… opposition figures have not failed to notice how setbacks in the war have whittled away at Mr. Zelensky’s popularity,” The New York Times recently noted.
Under the Constitution, elections must be called after martial law is lifted, the publication pointed out. Parliament first imposed martial law in February 2022, after the full-scale Russian invasion, and extends it with periodic votes.
“By one measure, Mr. Zelensky still has the support of a majority of Ukrainians, albeit a slim one: 52 percent still have trust in the president, according to a poll in December by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology,” the Times reported.
Polling data focusing on a hypothetical election shows Zelensky trailing a former commander in the military, Valery Zaluzhny, the Times stated. Zelensky fired Zaluzhny as part of a sweeping overhaul of the military command and is now Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain.
One survey, by the polling agency Leading Legal Initiatives, “showed Mr. Zaluzhny winning a hypothetical first round of a two-stage election with 24 percent of the vote,” the Times explained. “Mr. Zelensky trailed, with 16 percent; and [former Prime Minister Yulia] Tymoshenko, the opposition figure, came in third place with 12 percent. Neither Mr. Zaluzhny nor Ms. Tymoshenko has declared an intention to run.”
Zelensky’s waning popularity may be extending abroad too.
Unlike former Tymoshenko, who attended some of Trump’s inaugural events, Zelensky was not invited and said he would only come if he was.
The destruction of a Russian armored patrol in the rubbled remains of Chasiv Yar is seen in the following video released by Ukraine’s 24th King Danylo Separate Brigade. The unit claimed it “stopped another attempt by the occupiers to break through.”
Russian airborne troops attempted an assault using six armored infantry fighting vehicles, the brigade stated on Telegram. “Thanks to the prepared defense lines and coordinated actions of our units, we managed to destroy four enemy armored vehicles.”
A prized Russian 1L119 Nebo-SVU phased-array early warning radar station was damaged beyond repair by three Ukrainian drones in the Kherson region, according to the Spy Dossier Telegram channel. A DES ED3x30-T400-1RA1M6 diesel power plant was destroyed in the attack, Spy Dossier claimed.
The official Russian RIA Novosti media outlet released what it claims is the first video showing Russian technicians examining the nose section of a U.S.-made Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) rocket. They are fired by M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS).
For Russians, this could be one of the more interesting foreign material exploitation (FME) opportunities of the conflict, and there have been many of them so far. However, Russia has likely recovered these munitions before considering how many have been fired.
This section contains the Inertial Navigation System (INS) with Global Positioning System (GPS) guidance package and control actuators.
Both sides have turned to fiber optic cables for jamming-free guidance of their first-person view (FPV) drones. The cables make the drones impervious to efforts by electronic warfare (EW) equipment to interfere with the signal to the controller.
Ukraine is using mesh nets as a countermeasure. While they they can’t be jammed by EW, the FPV drones with optic cables are susceptible to getting snagged in such nets, as you can see in the following video.
To avoid Russian radar, a pair of Ukrainian Hind helicopter gunships was seen on video flying just a few feet off the ground before elevating slightly to pass over a stand of barren trees.
And finally, a two-ship flight of Ukrainian Su-27 Flankers has some fun, with one of the jets doing a rolling repositioning maneuver over the other.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com