Global & US Headlines
Russia Shatters Trump’s One-Week ‘Energy Truce’ With Record Missile-Drone Barrage Before Abu Dhabi Talks
On the night of 3-4 Feb 2026, hours before U.S.–mediated peace negotiations were to restart, Moscow unleashed the largest airborne strike of the war—70-plus missiles and roughly 450 drones aimed at Ukraine’s power grid—abruptly ending the week-long pause brokered by President Trump.
Focusing Facts
- Ukraine’s air force says it intercepted only 38 of at least 70 ballistic/cruise missiles, while 450 drones swarmed eight regions including Kyiv and Kharkiv.
- More than 1,000 residential blocks in Kyiv lost heat at –20 °C, and a major Kharkiv power plant was declared beyond repair.
- Delegations led by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and Ukrainian Security Council chief Rustem Umerov were scheduled to meet 4–5 Feb 2026 in Abu Dhabi.
Context
Major powers have tried mid-conflict “humanitarian pauses” before—most infamously the 1914 Christmas Truce on the Western Front that lasted days before the guns roared again. Like Israel–Hamas cease-fires in 2023 or NATO’s 1999 strikes on Serbia’s grid, targeting energy systems to break civilian morale is a well-worn tactic. What we are seeing is the long arc of industrial warfare rediscovering 19th-century siege logic: freeze the city, not just shell the army. The episode also exposes the structural limits of great-power mediation; Trump’s personalist diplomacy offered no enforcement mechanism, so the Kremlin used the lull to re-load. Over a century horizon the significance lies less in one more night of rockets than in the precedent that critical civilian infrastructure remains fair game despite Geneva ideals, and in Europe’s slow realisation that its own security, not Washington’s mood, must underwrite any durable order east of the Dnipro.
Perspectives
Left leaning media
Left leaning media — They frame Russia’s missile barrage as proof that Putin never intended to respect Trump’s "energy truce" and argue that only tougher Western guarantees and more aid can stop Moscow’s ‘energy-terror’. Deep distrust of Trump colours the coverage, so his mediation efforts are portrayed as naïve or cynical while Ukraine’s positions are taken largely at face value.
Right leaning opinion press
Right leaning opinion press — They insist Putin is faltering, demand that Washington hit Moscow with harsher sanctions and weapons, and criticise Trump for appearing weak rather than leveraging U.S. power to force concessions. A hawkish worldview leads them to magnify Russian losses and understate escalation risks, using muscular rhetoric to push for expanded U.S. intervention.
International broadcast outlets
International broadcast outlets — Their reports emphasise the humanitarian toll of the strikes, recount the week-long pause that Trump negotiated, and focus on the logistics and sticking points of the Abu Dhabi peace talks. In striving for balanced, event-driven reporting they largely sidestep prescriptions, which can leave audiences with limited context on underlying power politics.