Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,048

Here is the situation on Tuesday, January 7:

Fighting

Russia’s Ministry of Defence has claimed to have captured the village of Dachenske, south of Pokrovsk, another major city in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, that its troops are targeting.
Ukrainian police said a Russian drone strike targeted a bus in a Kherson neighbourhood on Monday, killing one person and injuring eight others.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia has suffered heavy losses amid the five-month incursion by Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region, with nearly 15,000 killed. The occupation of the southern Russian region has allowed Kyiv’s troops to establish a buffer zone, forcing Moscow to divert military units away from front-line areas in eastern Ukraine, he added.
Several dozen Ukrainian soldiers have deserted while training in France, a French army official told the AFP news agency. The troops are now subject to a disciplinary regime “imposed by the Ukrainian command”.

French President Emmanuel Macron has called on Ukraine to have “realistic” expectations regarding territory as its fight against the Russian invasion heads towards a fourth year, saying he saw no “quick and easy solution” to the conflict.
Moldovan authorities have summoned a Russian diplomat amid concern that the situation in Transnistria is worsening. The breakaway region risks a complete electricity blackout after Russia cut gas supplies.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming Ukraine envoy, retired Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg, has postponed a fact-finding trip to Kyiv and other European capitals until after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, according to sources.
The patriarch of Russia’s Orthodox Church, celebrating Christmas alongside Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin, said that the Western world despises Russia and its “alternative path of civilised development”.