No Inch of Ukraine Feels Safe Anymore
Russia unleashes nearly 300 drones & a wave of missiles as temperatures plunge. In Odesa, a chilling shift emerges: faster drones, fewer warnings, and civilians left with no chance to run for shelter
Just this afternoon, a close friend and community activist - normally upbeat to the point of contagious - looked at me and said something I’m hearing more and more across Ukraine: “Nowhere feels safe anymore.” Last night in Odesa felt like proof. At least two drones, as I describe in my video, appeared to evade air defences and failed to trigger the air-raid sirens - the first time, as far as we know, this has happened with drones. Is the Kremlin deploying new tactics or new technology to inflict maximum fear and casualties? The targets offered no obvious military value: an amusement park and a kindergarten among the damaged sites. Even the building housing the UN’s Odesa headquarters had many windows blown out; it remains unclear whether agencies inside were affected, as the UN did not respond to World Briefing’s query. And, strikingly, no condemnation was issued despite an apparent attack that put UN personnel and premises at risk.
Russia has launched a massive overnight attack on Ukraine, hitting critical energy facilities, including a thermal power plant, as temperatures across the country dropped to minus 15 degrees Celsius. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia used nearly 300 attack drones, as well as 18 ballistic and seven cruise missiles. “The situation in the Kyiv region is difficult -- several hundred thousand households are currently without power,” said Zelenskyy in a post on X. Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that it had carried out a “massive strike” on Ukrainian energy facilities, stating they were used by Ukraine’s army and military-industrial complex. Ukraine's leading private energy provider, DTEK, reported that Russian missiles hit a thermal power plant overnight amid freezing temperatures, marking the eighth major attack on its facilities since October 2025. The regional governor reported that a Russian attack on the Kharkiv region killed four people and injured several others. The overnight strikes also hit other Ukrainian regions, including the southern city of Odesa. Regional Governor Serhiy Lysak said residential buildings, a hospital, a school, and a kindergarten were damaged and at least five people were wounded in two waves of attacks.
The overnight Russian drone strike on Odesa also damaged a multi-storey office building housing several UN agencies, including WFP, IOM and UNHCR. World Briefing saw multiple windows blown out, though it was not immediately clear whether any UN offices sustained direct damage. Several buildings hosting foreign embassies and consulates have been hit since the start of the war nearly four years ago - most recently the Embassy of the State of Qatar in Kyiv. Notably, the UN in Ukraine did not mention the strike on its social media feed, and the office of the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Matthias Schmale, did not respond to a World Briefing query by publication time.
An overnight strike on Kharkiv brought yet another brutal reminder of how relentlessly Russia is targeting civilian life and the systems that keep society functioning. Among the hardest-hit sites was a Nova Poshta facility - Ukraine’s equivalent of FedEx - where four people were killed and another four injured, and the depot was almost completely destroyed. Nova Poshta, Ukraine’s leading private postal and logistics operator, has repeatedly rebuilt after previous attacks across the country - all while continuing to move essential supplies and deliver humanitarian aid throughout the war.
⚡ This morning in Odessa, I was on the ground just hours after Russia launched a vicious overnight drone attack - hitting civilian sites across the city, including an amusement park and kindergarten.
But the bigger story may be the shift behind the strike: in this video I lay out why these drones appear faster, stronger, and more stealthy, with signs they may be evading Ukraine’s air-raid alert systems - meaning no sirens, no warning, and no time for civilians to reach shelter.
All of this is unfolding during a punishing cold snap, with major parts of the country struggling with electricity and heating outages - making survival itself harder by the day.
👇 Watch the on-the-ground video from Odesa here — and if you value frontline reporting and sharp, no-fluff analysis, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to keep World Briefing going (and unlock exclusive subscriber-only content).
📍Odesa, Ukraine
US President Donald Trump has urged Iranians to “keep protesting” and “take over” institutions in the country, saying he has cancelled “all meetings” with Iranian officials, adding that “help is on the way.” Al Jazeera has learned that the plans for military action are in the advanced stages but a decision on whether to strike Iran or take some other form of action has not been made yet. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says the Iranian protesters and Trump’s military action will deal the “death blow” to the governing system in Tehran. He suggested killing Iran’s leaders and destroying the country’s military infrastructure. Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tells Al Jazeera: “If Washington wants to test the military option it has tested before, we are ready for it.” Meanwhile, UN human rights chief Volker Turk says he is “horrified” by violence in Iran amid reports that hundreds of people have been killed during the protests. Tens of thousands of pro-government demonstrators take to the streets in a show of force after weeks of deadly protests as Iran continues to be cut off from the internet for a fifth-straight day.
As the Iranian authorities impose a near-total communication blackout on a country convulsed by mass protests, videos and witness accounts slowly emerging suggest that the government is waging one of its deadliest crackdowns on unrest in more than a decade. Eyewitnesses say government forces have begun opening fire, apparently with automatic weapons and at times seemingly indiscriminately, on unarmed protesters. Hospital workers say protesters had been coming in with pellet injuries but now arrive with gunshot wounds and skull fractures. One doctor called it a “mass-casualty situation.” Despite the communications blockade, a recurring image has made its way out of Iran: rows and rows of body bags. In videos uploaded by opposition activists on social media, families can be seen sobbing as they huddle together over bloodied corpses in unzipped bags. And in footage aired on Iranian state television, a morgue official, sheathed in blue scrubs, stands amid bags neatly arranged along the floor of a white room, under glaring fluorescent lights. A senior Iranian health ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 3,000 people had been killed across the country but sought to shift the blame to “terrorists” fomenting unrest. The figure included hundreds of security officers, he said. - NYT
Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen has ruled out selling the island to the U.S. at upcoming crunch talks in Washington. Greenlandic Foreign Minister Vivian Motzfeldt and Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen are set to meet with U.S. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the White House on Wednesday to discuss President Donald Trump’s threats to take over the island. Asked Tuesday if those discussions could see Greenland agreeing to a purchase offer from the U.S., Nielsen said: “The mere talk of being able to buy another people is disrespectful.” Trump has repeatedly voiced his desire to buy the self-ruling Danish territory, calling it a strategic imperative, and has not ruled out using other methods, including military action, if Greenland and Denmark refuse to make a deal. “It’s easier,” Trump said Sunday, referring to buying the island. “But one way or the other, we’re going to have Greenland.” - Politico
U.S. federal officers dropped tear gas and sprayed eye irritant at activists Tuesday during another day of confrontations in Minneapolis while students miles away walked out of a suburban school to protest the Trump administration’s bold immigration sweeps. The government’s immigration crackdown is next headed to a federal court where Minnesota and two mayors are asking a judge to immediately suspend the operation. No hearing has been set on the request. Gas clouds filled a Minneapolis street near where Renee Good was fatally shot in the head by an immigration agent last week. A man scrubbed his eyes with snow and screamed for help as agents in an unmarked Jeep sprayed an orange irritant and drove away. It’s common for people to boo, taunt and blow orange whistles when they spot heavily armed agents passing through in unmarked vehicles or walking the streets. With the Department of Homeland Security pledging to send more than 2,000 immigration officers into Minnesota, the state, joined by Minneapolis and St. Paul, sued President Donald Trump’s administration Monday to halt or limit the surge - AP
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi will tell leaders of her Liberal Democratic Party on Wednesday that she intends to trigger a snap election, senior government and LDP officials said, as the country's first female premier seeks to capitalize on her high public support to restore the party's lower house majority - Nikkei Asia
A group of tourists so willingly followed their GPS instructions that they ended up driving up onto a ski slope. The three women from Taiwan ended up down the side of a mountain in the tiny European country of Andorra while blindly following the instructions of their car’s navigation system in their rented black Mercedes, the Daily Mail reported. The women became stuck while attempting to travel up a ski run near Grau Roig on January 6, and had to call emergency services for help, as they did not know how to fit the snow chains in their vehicle. A rescue team then spent more than three hours trying to get the car off the slope and back onto the snow-covered roads. No one was harmed during the incident, with the woman seeing the humorous side by taking pictures of their stranded vehicle on the slope while they waited to be rescued and sharing them with an Andorran newspaper. Another photo obtained by the paper shows the black car at the bottom of the empty slope next to a snow cannon - The Daily Beast
The journals…..
