Russia

Trump has said repeatedly he wouldn’t have allowed the conflict to start if he had been in office, even though he was president as fighting grew in eastern Ukraine between Kyiv’s forces and separatists backed by Moscow.

Moscow claims to have seized the eastern Ukrainian village of Novovasylivka as it appears to be slowly closing in on the key logistic city of Prokrovsk.

US President Donald Trump delivered tariff threats to China, and the European Union, while pressurising Russia with more sanctions and import levies. The European markets, however, hit new highs as investors looked beyond his policy impact.

The system outage forced a plane carrying Prime Minister Robert Fico to turn around and head back to Slovakia.

The Moscow-friendly leader has been pushing Brussels hard to put more pressure on Ukraine over Russian energy supplies.

In Sumy, a Russian drone strike killed four people, including a child, and injured nine. Over 100 residents were evacuated.

The EU will be able to renew its sectoral sanctions against Russia after Hungary abandoned its veto threat, which it had linked to energy concerns.

Zelenskyy said last year he had no intention of renewing the gas transit deal, stressing the importance for Europe of moving on from Russia and not allowing the Kremlin to ‘earn additional billions’ on Ukrainian blood.

The future of US aid to Ukraine remains uncertain as President Donald Trump begins his second term in office.

Euronews Next takes a closer look at the Pantsir-S1 missile system that is believed to have played a role in shooting down Azerbaijan Airlines flight 8243.