Russia carried out a major overnight attack on Ukraine in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday was a broken commitment to halt striking energy infrastructure as the countries prepared for more talks on ending Moscow’s 4-year-old full-scale invasion.

The bombardment included hundreds of drones and a record 32 ballistic missiles, wounding at least 10 people. It specifically took aim at the power grid, Zelenskyy said, as part of what Ukraine says is Moscow’s ongoing campaign to deny civilians light, heating and running water during the coldest winter in years.

“Taking advantage of the coldest days of winter to terrorize people is more important to Russia than diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.

Temperatures in Kyiv fell to minus 20 degrees Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit) during the night and stood at minus 16 C (minus 3 F) on Tuesday.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte visited Kyiv in a show of support. He said that the overnight strikes raise doubts about Moscow’s intentions on the eve of talks, calling them “a really bad signal.”

He added that it was clear that the attacks only strengthen Ukrainians’ resolve.

1:53
Power outages hit Ukraine amid cold snap

Officials have described recent talks between Moscow and Kyiv delegations as constructive. But after a year of efforts, the Trump administration is still searching for a breakthrough on key issues such as who keeps the Ukrainian land that Russia’s army has occupied, and a comprehensive settlement appears distant. The talks in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, are scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine is ready to discuss how to end the fighting. “But no one is going to surrender,” he said.

A Kremlin official said last week that Russia had agreed to halt strikes on Kyiv for a week until Feb. 1 because of the frigid temperatures, following a personal request from U.S. President Donald Trump to Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, the bitter cold is continuing and so are Russia’s aerial attacks.

Zelenskyy, however, accused Russia of breaking its commitment to hold off its attacks on Ukraine’s energy assets, claiming the weeklong pause was due to come into force last Friday.

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“We believe this Russian strike clearly violates what the American side discussed, and there must be consequences,” he said.

3:52
Kyiv residents struggle with power and heating cuts as energy ceasefire tested

The bombardment of at least five regions of Ukraine comprised 450 long-range drones and 70 missiles, Ukrainian officials said.
Russian officials provided no immediate response to Zelenskyy’s comments.

Ukraine says Russia has tried to wear down Ukrainians’ appetite for the fight by creating hardship for the civilian population living in dark, freezing homes.

It has tried to wreck Ukraine’s electricity network, targeting substations, transformers, turbines and generators at power plants.

Ukraine’s largest private power company, DTEK, said that the overnight attack hit its thermal power plants in the ninth major assault since October.

Rutte addressed the Ukrainian parliament during his visit and said that countries in the military alliance “are ready to provide support quickly and consistently” as peace efforts drag on.

Since last summer, NATO members have provided 75% of all missiles, and 90% of those used for Ukraine’s air defense, under a financial arrangement whereby alliance countries buy American weapons to give to Ukraine, he said.

European countries, fearing Moscow’s ambitions, see their own future security as being on the line in Ukraine.

“Be assured that NATO stands with Ukraine and is ready to do so for years to come,” Rutte said. “Your security is our security. Your peace is our peace. And it must be lasting.”

1:52
Trilateral talks on Ukraine end with no agreement

In Kyiv, officials said that five people were wounded in the strikes that damaged and set fire to residential buildings, a kindergarten and a gas station in various parts of the capital, according to the State Emergency Service.

By early morning, 1,170 apartment buildings in the capital were without heating, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. That set back desperate repair operations that had restored heat to all but 80 apartment buildings before the attack, he said.

Russia also struck Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, where injuries were reported, and the southern Odesa region.

The attack also damaged the Hall of Fame at the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in the Second World War, in Kyiv, Ukrainian Culture Minister Tetiana Berezhna said.

“It is symbolic and cynical at the same time: The aggressor state strikes a place of memory about the fight against aggression in the 20th century, repeating crimes in the 21st,” Berezhna said.

&copy 2026 The Canadian Press

A wild bull elephant killed a tourist in a Thai national park on Monday, the third human fatality caused by the same animal, staff said in a statement.

The 65-year-old Thai tourist from Lopburi province was trampled to death while exercising near his tent in a campground in Thailand’s Khao Yai National Park, chief Chaiya Huayhongthong told AFP.

Thai newspaper the Bangkok Post said the elephant, known locally as Oyewan, charged at the man and slammed him to the ground with its trunk before stomping on him.

A doctor and rescue workers said the man bled through his mouth and nose and suffered several broken limbs and other injuries.

The camper was identified as Jirathachai Jiraphatboonyathorn, the outlet said.

His wife, who was nearby when the early morning attack occurred, escaped after park rangers frightened the animal off, according to AFP.

0:42
79-year-old woman dead after elephant charges tour group in Zambia

“He was the third person killed by Oyewan,” Huayhongthong said, adding that the elephant could have been responsible for several more deaths that remain unsolved.

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In a statement on Facebook on Monday, the park acknowledged the death, saying, “Khao Yai National Park expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the deceased from the incident of wild elephants attacking tourists in Khao Yai National Park.”

Park authorities will meet on Friday to discuss what to do about the elephant, the chief said.

“We will probably decide to relocate him or change his behaviour,” Huayhongthong explained.

More than 220 people have been killed by wild elephants in Thailand since 2012, according to the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation.

Wild elephant numbers have risen rapidly in Thailand — from 334 in 2015 to almost 800 last year — leading to the introduction of a contraceptive vaccine administered among female elephants in an attempt to curb birth rates, France 24 wrote.

Thousands more live in captivity, it added.

A rise in the population of elephants in Thailand increases the risk of conflict between elephants and humans, Sukhee Boonsang, a director of the Wildlife Conservation Office, told AFP last month.

Asian elephants, Thailand’s national animal, are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Last January, a 22-year-old tourist was killed by an elephant at a sanctuary in Thailand after the animal turned on her while she was giving it a bath.

Blanca Ojanguren García, from northwest Spain, was bathing an elephant alongside her boyfriend at the Koh Yao Elephant Care Centre when the elephant attacked her.

The sanctuary’s owner said the elephant struck the woman with its trunk. No one else was injured in the attack.

Experts told local media the elephant was likely stressed by the pressure of living and interacting with tourists.

Another tourist was killed by an elephant while walking on a nature trail in Loei’s Phu Kradueng National Park in northern Thailand in December 2024, CBS reported.

— With files from Global News staff

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Iran’s president said Tuesday he instructed the country’s foreign minister to “pursue fair and equitable negotiations” with the United States, the first clear sign from Tehran it wants to try to negotiate as tensions remain high with Washington.

It comes after the Mideast country’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests last month.

The announcement marked a major turn for reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian, who had broadly warned Iranians for weeks that the turmoil in his country had gone beyond his control.

It also signals that the president received support from Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for talks that the 86-year-old cleric previously had dismissed.

But possible talks were thrust into question when U.S. Central Command said Tuesday a U.S. Navy fighter jet shot down an Iranian drone that was approaching an American aircraft carrier.

In an e-mailed statement, U.S. Central Command said the drone “aggressively approached” the aircraft carrier with “unclear intent” and it “continued to fly toward the ship despite deescalatory measures taken by U.S. forces operating in international waters.”

Turkey had been working behind the scenes to make the talks happen there later this week as U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff is traveling in the region. A Turkish official later said the location of talks was uncertain but that Turkey was ready to support the process. The official did not provide further details.

2:11
Thousands of Iranian-Canadians rally in Toronto in solidarity for loved ones back home

Foreign ministers from Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have also been invited to attend the talks, if they happen, according to the official who spoke on condition of anonymity as they did not have permission to speak to journalists.

But whether Iran and the U.S. can reach an agreement remains to be seen, particularly as U.S. President Donald Trump now has included Iran’s nuclear program in a list of demands from Tehran in any talks.

Trump ordered the bombing of three Iranian nuclear sites during the 12-day war Israel launched against Iran in June.

Writing on X, Pezeshkian said in English and Farsi that the decision came after “requests from friendly governments in the region to respond to the proposal by the President of the United States for negotiations.”

“I have instructed my Minister of Foreign Affairs, provided that a suitable environment exists — one free from threats and unreasonable expectations — to pursue fair and equitable negotiations, guided by the principles of dignity, prudence and expediency,” he said.

3:25
Families learn of loved ones’ fates in Iran protests

The U.S. has yet to acknowledge the talks will take place. A semiofficial news agency in Iran on Monday reported — then later deleted without explanation — that Pezeshkian had issued such an order to Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who held multiple rounds of talks with Witkoff before the 12-day war.

On Tuesday, Araghchi spoke by phone with his counterparts from Oman, Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait, but did not mention anything about a possible venue.

Late Monday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al Mayadeen, which is politically allied with the Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, aired an interview with Ali Shamkhani, a top Khamenei adviser on security.

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Shamkhani, who now sits on the country’s Supreme National Security Council and who in the 1980s led Iran’s navy, wore a naval uniform as he spoke.

He suggested that if the talks happened, they would be indirect at the beginning, then move to direct talks if a deal appeared to be attainable. Direct talks with the U.S. long have been a highly charged political issue within Iran’s theocracy, with reformists like Pezeshkian pushing for them and hard-liners dismissing them.

The talks would solely focus on nuclear issues, he added.

1:55
Trump says US “armada” is heading toward Iran

Asked about whether Russia could take Iran’s enriched uranium like it did in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, Shamkhani dismissed the idea, saying there was “no reason” to do so. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Russia had “long offered these services as a possible option that would alleviate certain irritants for a number of countries.”

“Iran does not seek nuclear weapons, will not seek a nuclear weapon and will never stockpile nuclear weapons, but the other side must pay a price in return for this,” he said.

Iran had been enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels. The International Atomic Energy Agency had said Iran was the only country in the world to enrich to that level that wasn’t armed with the bomb.

Iran has been refusing requests by the IAEA to inspect the sites bombed in the June war.

“The quantity of enriched uranium remains unknown, because part of the stockpile is under rubble, and there is no initiative yet to extract it, as it is extremely dangerous,” Shamkhani said.

Witkoff is expected to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity.

While in Israel, Witkoff will meet with the head of the Mossad intelligence service and the Israeli military’s chief of staff, according to another official who was not authorized to speak to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Israel is expected to ask that any agreement with Iran include removing enriched uranium from the country, stopping the enrichment of uranium, limiting the creation of ballistic missiles and ending support for Tehran’s proxies.

However, Shakhani in his interview rejected giving up uranium enrichment — a major obstacle in earlier talks with the U.S. In November, Araghchi said Iran was doing no enrichment in the country because of the U.S. bombing of the nuclear sites.

3:13
White House claims no enriched uranium was removed prior to US attacks on Iran

Witkoff will travel to Abu Dhabi, the UAE capital, later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, the official said.

“We have talks going on with Iran, we’ll see how it all works out,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. Asked what his threshold was for military action against Iran, he declined to elaborate.

“I’d like to see a deal negotiated,” Trump said. “Right now, we’re talking to them, we’re talking to Iran, and if we could work something out, that’d be great. And if we can’t, probably bad things would happen.”

Mike Pompeo, a hard-liner on Iran who served as CIA director and secretary of state in Trump’s first term, said it was “unimaginable that there can be a deal.”

“I think they may come away with some set of understandings,” Pompeo said at Dubai’s World Governments Summit. “But to think that there’s a long-term solution that actually provides stability and peace to this region while the ayatollah is still in power is something I pray for but find unimaginable.”

Also Tuesday, a ship transiting through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, reported being hailed on the radio “by numerous small armed vessels,” the British military’s United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said.

There was no identifying information on the vessel, which continued into the Persian Gulf. The position of the incident appeared to be in Iranian territorial waters, where officials had warned of a naval drill by the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days.