Ukraine Conflict Monitor
Update
Ukraine war situation update | 3 – 9 January 2026
Overview of political violence events in Ukraine from 3 to 9 January 2026
Key stats
1,515 political violence events
3% increase compared to the previous three weeks
75 incidents of violence targeting civilians
18% decrease compared to the previous three weeks
At least 32 fatalities from civilian targeting
52% decrease compared to the previous three weeks
Key events
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8 Jan.
Dnipropetrovsk — A Russian combined strike kills one civilian, injures 24, and causes power outages in Kryvyi Rih
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9 Jan.
Odesa — A Russian drone strike on two ships near Odesa port kills a Syrian crew member
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9 Jan.
Kyiv — A Russian combined drone and missile strike kills four civilians and causes widespread power outages in Kyiv city
Key trends
- Russian forces captured a settlement in the border area of the Sumy region, as well as another north of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region. In the Donetsk region, Russian troops seized a village southeast of Kramatorsk and claimed to have captured a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Russian forces also seized another village north of Huliaipole in the Zaporizhia region.
- Russian forces launched at least 46 long-range missile and drone attacks affecting the Dnipropetrovsk, Chernihiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, and Poltava regions; Kyiv city and the surrounding region; and the western regions of Lviv and Khmelnytskyi.
- Russian strikes killed at least 32 civilians in Kherson, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy, Zaporizhia, Odesa, and Kyiv city and region.
Spotlight: Russia signals its strike capability to the West with a dummy Oreshnik missile strike miles from the EU
In the late evening of 8 January, Russian forces fired an Oreshnik hypersonic missile at Lviv, a city in western Ukraine located approximately 60 kilometers from the Polish border. The strike represents the second time Russia has used the nuclear-capable missile in Ukraine, this time further from the frontline and closer to European Union territory.
The missile triggered the automatic shutdown of the city’s gas distribution safety system, but, contrary to initial reports, did not hit Ukraine’s underground gas reserves in the Lviv region. Russian defense officials have claimed that the missile damaged the Lviv State Aviation Repair Plant. While an unnamed Ukrainian official did acknowledge the strike on “a workshop at a state enterprise in Lviv,” they downplayed its impact as merely a result of the kinetic force of the missile’s “inert dummy warheads.”1 Military observers have agreed on the seemingly limited impact of this event but have underlined the missile’s ability to avoid most modern air defense systems through hypersonic speed, travel routes, and irregular spread of warheads before impact.2 The first documented use of the Oreshnik in Ukraine on 21 November 2024 damaged a major defense plant and a civilian care center in Dnipro city.
The attack, which was initially claimed by the Russian Ministry of Defence as a response to the unconfirmed Ukrainian attack on the Russian president’s residence in the Valdai Hills,3 is likely a signal of readiness and strike capability to Ukraine’s allies who are negotiating financial and security guarantees, including troop deployments, to Kyiv. Together with the deployment of a nuclear-capable hypersonic ballistic missile system to Belarus in December 2025,4 the Oreshnik missile strikes may become the Russian leadership’s most prominent means of saber-rattling to deter further Western support of Ukraine.
For more, see the ACLED 2026 Conflict Watchlist report, Exhausted Ukraine faces military and diplomatic pressure to cede the Donbas.
Explore the ACLED Conflict Exposure Calculator to assess the number of people affected by armed violence, disaggregated by locations, time period, and actors involved.
