Ukraine…Russia Day 1443….Russia Working to Colonize it’s Captured Ukraine Children and Land…

While Ukrainians are hunkered down in powerless , bombed out cities….

Like the British during WWII…..Hanging In…..

Russia Is is integrating captured Ukrainian’s into their culture….

Talks go on , but Putin IS leaning on Trump to get what he can from him if he can’t get the same on the battle. field….

This while Russian’s suffer their own economic misery….

Ukraine President Zelensky travels around Europe and America trying to keep things going in his War against a Russia that wants to back his countries independence….

Long….

Hard Days….

 

• Ukraine and Russia concluded a second round of US-brokered talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday aimed at ending Europe’s biggest conflict since the second world war, with the two sides conducting a major prisoner swap and agreeing to resume negotiations soon. But Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy involved in the talks, cautioned that “significant work remains” in the weeks ahead, dampening expectations of any swift move towards peace. The meetings marked the most substantive engagement between senior delegations from Kyiv and Moscow in months, pointing to a tentative, if uncertain, revival of diplomatic efforts nearly four years into the war.

• US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday said more US sanctions against Russia depended on talks aimed at ending the nearly four-year-old Ukraine war. Bessent said he would consider new sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet – a step Trump has not taken since returning to office in January 2025. His comments come after Ukraine and Russia concluded a second day of US-led talks in Abu Dhabi on Thursday without a breakthrough in ending the conflict. “I will take it under consideration. We will see where the peace talks go,” Bessent said at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. He said the Trump administration’s sanctions against Russian oil majors Rosneft and Lukoil had helped bring Russia to the negotiating table in the peace talks.

• Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the trilateral talks with the US and Russia were “not easy,” but insisted that Ukraine would remainconstructive and seek a fair deal to end to the Russian aggression. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office, said the trilateral negotiations had been “genuinely constructive”, thanking the US and the United Arab Emirates for their role in mediating the talks. Russia’s representative, Kirill Dmitriev, similarly struck a positive note, saying there had been progress and “forward movement” in discussions on ending the war.

• Separately, Russia has signalled its readiness to engage with more European leaders, saying it could “listen to any proposal” if it considered it a serious attempt to reopen diplomatic channels and not “pathetic” posturing.

• Western sanctions are having a “significant impact” on the Russian economy, the EU’s sanctions envoy has said, ahead of the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. David O’Sullivan, a veteran Irish official, said sanctions were “not a silver bullet” and would always face circumvention, but insisted that after four years he was confident they were having an effect. “We may be, in the course of 2026, coming to a point where the whole thing becomes unsustainable, because so much of the Russian economy has been distorted so much by the building up of the war economy at the expense of the civil economy,” he told the Guardian in a rare interview. The Russian economy is thought to be under its greatest strain since the early days of the war. Oil revenues are plummeting, inflation is running at about 6% and interest rates at 16%.

• Night-time shelling by Ukraine inflicted “serious damage” in the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border, the region’s governor said early on Friday. Vyacheslav Gladkov, in a video posted on Telegram after midnight, said city officials were holding an emergency meeting to devise a plan of action. “The enemy has shelled the civilian city of Belgorod. Everyone knows we have no military targets,” said Gladkov. “There has been serious damage. I have been out to look around.” A post on the unofficial Russian Telegram channel Mash, which has sources in the security services, said missiles had hit the city that lies about 40 km (25 miles) from the Ukrainian border and power had been cut in some districts….

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ISW…Russian Occupation Update, February 5, 2026

1. A Russian military court recently issued extensive and illegal sentences against nine deported Kherson Oblast residents.
2. Kazakhstan facilitated the deportation of a Ukrainian citizen to Russia.
3. The Russian Investigative Committee (Sledkom) is institutionalizing its presence in schools in occupied Ukraine to prepare Ukrainian children for future service in Russia’s militarized law enforcement apparatus.
4. Active-duty Russian servicemembers continue to visit schools in occupied Ukraine and engage with children and youth on the topic of military service.
5. Russian occupation administrations are intensifying efforts to formalize the militarization of schools in occupied Ukraine in line with the mandatory Russian “Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Motherland” (OBZR) curriculum.
6. The Luhansk Oblast occupation administration appears to be setting conditions for the widescale appropriation of agricultural land.
7. Chechen Republic Head Ramzan Kadyrov is reportedly continuing efforts to personally profit from Russia’s occupation of Ukraine.
8. Russian companies are actively investing in resource extraction projects in occupied Ukraine.
9. Russia is continuing efforts to formalize its control over the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), setting conditions to restart power generation at the plant and connect it to the Russian power grid.
10. The Russian federal United Institute for Spatial Planning (EIPP) appears to be scaling up its direct influence over development projects in occupied Ukraine.

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Is Russiam attacks and the Ukraine Winter softeningn up the Ukraine Up?

The future of the Donbas is among the thorniest issues as Ukraine, Russia and the United States continue talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, on Wednesday.

Ukraine has spent years fortifying cities in the Donbas, and has lost a huge number of soldiers defending the industrial region. The territory covers parts of several regions, including Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine still holds about 20 percent of Donetsk but has lost all of Luhansk.

For Russia, capturing the Donbas, where Moscow has lost many more soldiers than Ukraine has, could allow it to claim some measure of victory even as it has fallen far short of its goal of subjugating all of Ukraine.

In public statements, President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that Ukraine remains opposed to a unilateral withdrawal from the Donbas. But he has also occasionally hinted at flexibility, saying that both Russia and Ukraine must be prepared to compromise as Ukraine comes under pressure on the battlefield and at the negotiating table.

In May 2022, two months after Ukrainian forces repelled the Russian Army around the capital, Kyiv, a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 82 percent of Ukrainians believed that the country should not surrender territory under any circumstances.

In the institute’s most recent survey, published on Monday, 40 percent of respondents said they would support giving up the Donbas in exchange for security guarantees.

The two figures are not directly comparable, because earlier polls did not attach security guarantees to the question about ceding territory. But the finding tracked with other survey data showing a rising acceptance of territorial concessions.

Still, a majority of Ukrainians remain opposed. Many say they are prepared to continue enduring hardships, including Russia’s campaign to knock out the country’s energy infrastructure during a bitterly cold winter….

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