Russia Strikes Ukraine’s Energy Sector, Killing 12 Miners

The attack comes during a winter freeze and despite efforts by President Trump and others to get the two countries to negotiate a truce.A tent provided by the government to provide heat and electricity in Kyiv last month. Russia has devastated Ukraine’s power grid this winter, the coldest in more than a decade.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2026, 2:08 p.m. ETA Russian drone strike killed 12 miners who had just finished their shift at a coal mine in east-central Ukraine on Sunday afternoon, officials said, highlighting the limitations of a partial, short-term truce that Russia agreed to last week at President Trump’s request.The strike hit a bus carrying workers from a mine run by DTEK, a prominent power company, in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the company said Sunday evening on social media. Initially, the energy company said 15 workers had been killed and seven injured, but later a spokesman said the toll included 12 dead and 16 injured. DTEK added that the strike was part of a large Russian attack on Ukrainian mining operations in the region. The area is a critical hub for Ukraine’s coal industry, essential for providing heating during the current winter freeze. The Russian strikes show that Moscow is continuing to attack cities in Ukraine despite a planned second round of trilateral peace talks in the United Arab Emirates that was supposed to start today. The strikes also came despite Mr. Trump’s request that the Kremlin stop hitting Ukraine during the cold spell. Russia has devastated Ukraine’s power grid this winter, the coldest in more than a decade. An initial massive strike Jan. 9 left half the capital, Kyiv, without heat.While many buildings were reconnected to the power grid, a second strike, on Jan. 20, again plunged much of the capital into darkness, and that assault was followed by a third strike Jan. 24. On Saturday, cascading outages swept across the country’s power grid, briefly shutting it down in many cities and parts of the neighboring country of Moldova after a systemic failure. And on Sunday, when the temperature in Kyiv dipped to almost minus 6 Fahrenheit, or minus 21 Celsius, more than 500 buildings in the city still had no heat. Most Ukrainians had no power for most of the day. Mr. Trump announced Thursday that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had agreed to his previously undisclosed request for a weeklong pause on attacks on “Kyiv and the various towns.” Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said Friday that the agreement applied only to Kyiv, and that it would expire today. He said the goal was the “creation of favorable conditions for holding talks.”The trilateral peace talks in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates, first held on Jan. 23 and 24, are the most visible signs of progress that Mr. Trump has made in his efforts to stop the war. Kyiv, Moscow and Washington described that first round of talks as “constructive,” and a second round was supposed to start today. But then Russian and U.S. negotiators met in Florida Saturday without the Ukrainians. The second round of trilateral peace talks was postponed until Wednesday and Thursday.ImagePresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine heading to a meeting with President Trump last month in Davos, Switzerland.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York TimesPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said that his country would stop its long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries if Russia ended its onslaught on Ukraine’s power infrastructure. The New York Times would like to hear from readers who want to share messages and materials with our journalists.While Kyiv has seen a lull in strikes since Mr. Trump announced the truce, regions in the east and south have experienced a rise in attacks on logistics and transportation hubs. And by striking buses that carry workers and trains that carry coal, Russia can achieve its goal of damaging Ukraine’s energy grid without technically violating its pledge not to hit Kyiv.On Sunday evening, Mr. Zelensky said he expected the Americans to continue working to reduce strikes before the next round of peace talks. “Much depends on what the American side can achieve so that people can trust both the process and the results,” he said. He described the attack on the bus as “a demonstrative crime, which once again shows that it is Russia that is responsible for the escalation.”And Mr. Zelensky pointed out that the Russians on Sunday also hit the railway in Dnipropetrovsk and railway infrastructure in northeastern Ukraine.But attacks on Kyiv are likely to increase in coming days, given Moscow’s insistence that the truce ends today.Last week, the Kremlin once again floated the idea of Mr. Zelensky traveling to Moscow for one-on-one negotiations, an invitation that Mr. Zelensky has rejected. In response to Mr. Zelensky’s refusal, the speaker of the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, said Russian lawmakers have demanded that so-called “retaliatory weapons” be used against Ukraine next week, when weather forecasters predict temperatures could fall to as low as minus 22 Fahrenheit, or minus 30 Celsius.Kim Barker is a Times reporter writing in-depth stories about the war in Ukraine.