First round of trilateral meetings shows ‘a lot of progress’ made towards peace, says US official, despite new Russian attacks. What we know on day 1,432

Ukraine and Russia have agreed to hold a second round of US-brokered direct peace talks next weekend after a two-day meeting in Abu Dhabi, despite Ukrainian complaints that negotiations were undermined by a barrage of deadly strikes. The trilateral talks in the UAE would resume on 1 February, a US official said on Saturday, adding: “I think getting everyone together was a big step. I think it’s a confirmation of the fact that, number one, a lot of progress has been made to date in really defining the details needed to get to a conclusion.” The talks were the first known direct contact between Ukrainian and Russian officials on a plan being pushed by Donald Trump to end the nearly four-year war. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said “a lot was discussed, and it is important that the conversations were constructive”.

Russia was criticised for launching drone and missile attacks on Kyiv and Kharkiv – Ukraine’s two largest cities – during peace talks in Abu Dhabi, reported Peter Beaumont. “Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure. With Kyiv and other cities in the midst of widespread outages of heat, water and power after Russian attacks on energy infrastructure, officials in the capital said one person had been killed and at least 15 injured in the strikes that continued until morning.

US envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff spoke to Russian president Vladimir Putin for four hours in Moscow ahead of the trilateral peace talks, a US official said. They “met for just about four hours, and again, [a] very, very productive discussion, speaking about the final issues that are open”, the official told a media call on Saturday.

The governor of the Russian border region of Belgorod said Ukrainian forces had launched a “massive” attack on the region’s main town, damaging energy infrastructure but causing no casualties. Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram on Saturday that a building in the town – also called Belgorod – had been set on fire and an emergency crew was tackling the blaze. A downed drone had also damaged homes in a nearby village, he said.

The Russian defence ministry said on Saturday its forces had completed the takeover of the village of Starytsya in Ukraine’s north-eastern Kharkiv region. The village is near the town of Vovchansk, close to the Ukraine-Russia border, where Russian forces launched an incursion in May 2024, and Moscow’s troops have been trying to extend their gains despite Ukrainian resistance. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said late on Saturday that Russian forces had launched six attacks on an area including Starytsya. It made no acknowledgement that the village had changed hands. Ukraine’s DeepState military blog made no mention of the village in a report on Friday but said Russian forces “are continuing their pressure in the Vovchansk area”. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified.

An intercepted oil tanker suspected of belonging to Russia’s shadow fleet headed on Saturday to a port in southern France for police to inspect, French authorities said. The tanker, the Grinch, was intercepted on Thursday morning in international waters between Spain and North Africa, French president Emmanuel Macron said on X. French prosecutors suspect it of belonging to the network of vessels Moscow is accused of using to dodge sanctions imposed over its invasion of Ukraine. The tanker would be anchored at Fos-sur-Mere near Marseille and kept at the disposal of the Marseille public prosecutor as part of a preliminary investigation for failure to fly a flag, the regional maritime prefecture said.

Amid the tumult of the WEF in Davos this week, some investors are leading the way by ditching US government bonds

There is a way to file for divorce from Donald Trump and Europe needs to grab the opportunity.

To the public it will look as if nothing has changed. But behind the scenes the EU and the UK could close the joint bank account and cut up the credit cards, or at least set in motion a form of financial separation that limits the power of a controlling former partner.

Many of those moved into an asylum return centre have held jobs for years and can speak the language

“Sweden did this for us,” said Sofiye*, making a supportive scooping up gesture with her hands. “And then, bam.” She dropped them to the ground.

Sofiye, who has three children, arrived in Sweden from Uzbekistan as an asylum seeker in 2008, and for much of that time she was able to build a life in the Scandinavian country. The family lived in a flat in a Stockholm suburb and Sofiye worked for the municipality in the home help department. She learned Swedish and her children went through the Swedish school system. Her youngest son was born in Sweden and her 18-year-old son, Hamza, who is studying in college to be a technician, doesn’t know life anywhere else.

Searching for a quieter hiking route, Rory Buccheri found tranquility on the historic Romboleden pilgrimage

In search of an alternative side to Hungary’s capital, Henry Roberts visited a giant circus and dance show on the outskirts of the city

Shift in relations and unpredictability of Donald Trump make it ‘risky to store so much gold in the US’, say experts

Germany is facing calls to withdraw its billions of euros’ worth of gold from US vaults, spurred on by the shift in transatlantic relations and the unpredictability of Donald Trump.

Germany holds the world’s second biggest national gold reserves after the US, of which approximately €164bn (£122bn) worth – 1,236 tonnes – is stored in New York.

Kyiv says Moscow used 396 drones and missiles in ‘another night of Russian terror’ on second day of talks in UAE

Russia launched a major drone and missile attack targeting Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv, early on Saturday, as US, Ukrainian and Russian negotiators met in the United Arab Emirates for a second day of tripartite peace talks.

“Peace efforts? Trilateral meeting in the UAE? Diplomacy? For Ukrainians, this was another night of Russian terror,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said after the latest Russian assault on critical infrastructure.

In the US, comedy has long filled the space vacated by partisan news media. Now France is following its lead

Sometimes the freedom and openness of comedy means it is better able to respond to world events than news media. Take South Park’s raucous, unhinged and visually disturbing depictions of Donald Trump – most recently, cheating on Satan (who is carrying his spawn) with JD Vance in the White House. Fair enough: Trey Parker and Matt Stone very much own this terrain.

But there’s no reason why satirical TV programmes such as The Daily Show should have to take on the role of news provider, investigative journalist and critic. And yet, over the past three decades, the failings of the US corporate media to adequately cover the country’s dilapidated politics has pushed people such as Jon Stewart into filling the void.

The problem was identified as long ago as 2000 by the US economist Paul Krugman. He castigated the press for being “fanatically determined to seem even-handed”, to the point they were unwilling to call out outrageous untruths. “If a presidential candidate were to declare that the Earth is flat,” Krugman wrote, “you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.”

It was this context that provided American satire’s cathartic triumph in the first years of the 21st century. The Daily Show began conducting harder-hitting interviews than most primetime TV shows. Stephen Colbert rose to prominence by playing a fake conservative talkshow host, in an open parody of Bill O’Reilly’s mid-2000s show on Fox. And then John Oliver pioneered “investigative comedy”, frequently doing a better job of breaking scandalous stories than the news programmes he was satirising.

Alexander Hurst is a Guardian Europe columnist. H​is memoir, Generation Desperation​, is published in January 2026

Wolves killed more than 2,100 reindeer in Finland last year, and herders are blaming the Ukraine war

Juha Kujala no longer knows how many reindeer will return to his farm from the forest each December. The 54-year-old herder releases his animals into the wilderness on the 830-mile Finnish-Russian border each spring to grow fat on lichens, grass and mushrooms, just as his ancestors have done for generations.

But since 2022, grisly discoveries of reindeer skeletons on the forest floor have disrupted this ancient way of life. The culprits, according to Kujala: wolves from Russia.

Prosecutors had opened an investigation into allegations that the singer had sexually assaulted two former employees