Situation Goes Critical as Kiev Begins Emptying Out
Another large-scale Russian strike yesterday has brought Kiev and several other major Ukrainian cities to the brink. Everything from Iskanders to even hypersonic Zircons were allegedly used, as per Ukrainian sources which claimed that virtually everything was again “shot down”:
Zelensky himself announced over one million people in Kiev alone are without power, while numerous other reports give the figure as 80% of Kiev in a total outage.
Almost all of Kiev and the Chernigov region remain without electricity and heating
▪️87% of consumers in the Chernigov region are without electricity, according to “Ukrenergo”, all emergency disconnection queues are simultaneously in effect in the region, reports the regional energy company.
▪️Meanwhile, a monitoring map of Kiev has appeared, where more than 80% of subscribers remain without electricity and heat.
But the most shocking figure came from mayor Klitschko, who said that just in January alone, 600,000 residents have fled Kiev, with more being urged to flee:
Temperatures have fallen as low as minus 18C during a cold snap projected to last at least two more weeks. This month 600,000 people have already fled the capital, home to more than 3 million, Klitschko said.
Other publications quoted Klitschko specifically stating the 600k came in just January from people who heeded his call made on January 9th to evacuate the capital:
Anyone else consider it utterly catastrophic for one of Europe’s largest capitals to lose upwards of 20-25% of its population in literally two weeks? Wiki shows Kiev as having had 2.9M people before the war—we can assume it had even less than that recently. That would make 600k arguably as high as 25% of its total amount—a simply unprecedented number.
Kiev is literally being emptied out, and that this isn’t the biggest story in the world is a bit of a shock. Remember: this 600k is only in the past two weeks, and Russian strikes are getting worse as winter bites. There are now rumors Russia plans to launch two Oreshnik missiles this week, with some Ukrainian sources claiming this time they’ll be aimed at Kiev.
Will we soon see Kiev entirely abandoned?
Even the Verkhovna Rada now reports it has no heating or power:
- The Verkhovna Rada apparatus is working remotely today due to the lack of heating, water supply, and electricity after the bombings, said Deputy Zheleznyak. The temperature in the office is around +12 degrees, and there was almost no heating.
- Deputy Getmantsev also confirmed that there is no heating in the Rada building. Few remaining deputies are working in jackets.
- Earlier, it was reported that about half of Kiev's multi-story buildings are without heat.
Day after day no power for hours. No schedules anymore, it’s now constant emergency blackout.
This is nearby supermarket: bread shelves completely empty. The doors open.
With freezing temperatures and worsening conditions, people are talking about moving out.
They are reportedly now discussing shutting down the Kiev metro entirely in order to save electricity.
Kiev’s metro may be shut down if the power supply situation worsens, said Vladimir Omelchenko, director of energy programs at the Razumkov Center.
Well, trams are already getting a little “help” there:
Ukraine’s top radio-electronics expert Serhiy ‘Flash’ Beskrestnov made an urgent post saying that Russia may soon go for the final deathblow in knocking out Ukrainian nuclear plants, which is the last remaining source of Ukraine’s energy:
The President of Ukraine and the Main Intelligence Directorate (GUR) have made statements about preparing strikes on substations at nuclear power plants.
Indeed, nuclear power plants have now effectively become the only sources of electricity generation in the country, and if the enemy wants to achieve a complete blackout, he will need to attack these facilities.
What this is about. Next to each nuclear power plant there is a substation and switching fields, which, let’s say, “output” the generated electricity from the nuclear power plant and send it to power lines that converge to the nuclear power plant from different sides. In fact, this is part of the nuclear power plant infrastructure. The substation and switching sometimes are located a kilometer away from the reactors, and sometimes 300 meters away!!!
Although Russia assures the whole world about its “precise” weapons, we can see that this is not the case. Daggers (Kinzhal) hit wherever they can, and the accuracy of cruise missiles and ballistics is also not perfect.
Everyone well remembers the recent tragedy in Ternopil, when instead of a factory, “precise” missiles hit a residential building. We also remember the hits on neighboring buildings in Kyiv during the attack on the “Luch” Design Bureau. We all remember the “precise” Shahed drones that attacked the hydroelectric power station, but all of them hit residential buildings in Vyshgorod.
I very much hope that the Russians will have the sense not to try to attack nuclear power plants, because a missile strike by an Iskander or a Dagger could turn into a second Chernobyl. In fact, all our nuclear power plants are located near either Belarus or the occupied territory of the Russian Federation, and a possible tragedy would affect everyone
Given that he sources his concerns from the GUR, some believe this is in actuality a Ukrainian preparation to stage a false flag against its own nuclear power plants in order to pre-emptively blame Russia. You be the judge.
The hits simply keep on coming, here Rivne region yesterday:
Switching gears, to one other interesting update.
Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky has done another new interview wherein he gives some fascinating insights.
The entire thing can be watched here, albeit with imperfect AI translation. A more helpful written transcript can be read here: https://lb.ua/society/2026/01/18/717446_golovnokomanduvach_zsu_sirskiy.html
One of the first most interesting things he says is in regard to the general composition of the frontline as of 2025-2026, confirming that the “classical” military ‘rulebook’ has been thrown out in regard to force posture:
Now there are no company strongholds, platoon strongholds in the classical sense. There are positions that are combined into strong points as echelons both in depth and along the front, they have a limited number of personnel – the ability of drones to defeat people imposes their own characteristics.
As we have now been long-reading, he states above that companies and platoons no longer even have ‘strongholds’ on the front, and instead rely on the now-infamous ‘dispersed’ style of positions.
Then he drops a bombshell on the topic of drones which flies in the face of most of what we hear from the Ukrainian side. When asked as of January 2026 who has the advantage in drones, he says it is equal, as Russia has quantitatively caught up to Ukraine:
The balance of power on drones as of mid-January is in whose favor-ours or theirs?
The number of drones is approximately the same. The question is about quality. In conventional drones, quality is on our side. In optical fiber, we are, alas, only catching up with the enemy.
He claims that Ukraine is still ahead qualitatively in regular FPVs, while Russia has the advantage in fiber-optic ones.
But the bigger shocker was his claim that Russia now produces a whopping 404 Geran drones per day and plans to increase it to 1,000 in 2026:
Albeit some have quoted him as stating Geran-like drones, which could include other longer range Russian drones like Molniya (“Lightning”) and such.
Recall that last year many Western publications claimed Russia could only do ~100 per day or a little more.
In a separate corresponding post on his Facebook, Syrsky elaborated by revealing that Russia’s new unmanned systems branch already has 80,000 servicemen and will grow to 165,500 by 2026, and 210,000 by 2030:
“Thanks to our military intelligence, we know that the enemy has no less ambitious plans. The Russians followed our path and created separate Unmanned Systems Forces, which already number 80,000 servicemen. In the second phase, in 2026, they plan to double this number – to 165,500. And by 2030 – almost 210,000,” Syrskyi informed.
It is also known that the state order for the production of long-range drones in Russia has been fulfilled at 106% over the year, and the aggressor country’s military-industrial complex produces over 400 such UAVs daily.
Also note his honest admission that Russia has blown past its production quota of Geran-style drones for year 2025 with 106% fulfillment.
In the meantime, Bloomberg reports that “Europe’s most valuable defense tech startup” has had such severe “setbacks” with its poorly-functioning drones on the front that Ukraine has halted all further orders of the disappointing units—the drones could barely even take off:
Syrsky goes on to again mention Russia’s force generation, stating that Russia plans to build 11 new divisions in 2026. However, he does cling to the recent narrative that Russian losses have allegedly skyrocketed in 2025 to the point where Russia is no longer able to add manpower to its frontline force, instead merely ‘breaking even’ with recruitment:
Russia aims to form at least 11 new divisions and recruit 409,000 people under contract, - the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine
This year, Russia may increase the number of its grouping in the zone of the special military operation, Syrsky claims.
The Kremlin aims to form at least 11 new divisions and recruit 409,000 people under contract. Last year, about 406,000 people signed contracts with the Russian Armed Forces.
In total, the Russian Armed Forces have about 4.5 million trained reserve soldiers.
He makes the somewhat dubious claim that Ukraine’s losses throughout 2025 actually droppedby 13%, while Russia’s surged.
By the way, in 2015, the number of our losses decreased by 13%. While the enemy's loss rate increased significantly. I want to note that in two years – the 24th and 25th-the enemy's losses amounted to more than 850,000 personnel. This refers to all losses-both killed and wounded. This indicates the effectiveness of military operations.
It’s interesting that he gives Russian total losses for both 2024 and 2025 as north of 850,000—counting all types of casualties, not just KIA. Such a tally should yield upwards of 200-300k killed just for those two years alone, yet oddly MediaZona still has Russian KIA at 163,000 total for the entire war.
In fact, MediaZona now has a handy tool showing every single “confirmed” name of Russian KIAs. You can sort it by year at the bottom.
For 2022, they have: 18,929
2023: 39,694
2024: 58,064
2025: 22,767
Take from that what you will.
By the way, even the peak year with ~58,000 averages to a bit over 150+ killed per day, which is in the general area of what we’ve been saying for a long time. Pro-UA “OSINT” sources on the other hand now regularly claim Russia suffers “1,000 KIA per day”.
On that count, here’s another interesting recent analysis done by Armchair Warlord:
Armchair Warlord@ArmchairW
A leak of patient data from the Russian military medical system back in mid-2024 seems to have flown under the radar of the commentariat for pretty simple reasons: Russians aren't going to comment on a leak and the data is devastating for Ukraine.⬇️ Of particular note is a data
2:02 PM · Jan 18, 2026 · 64.9K Views
49 Replies · 290 Reposts · 1.21K Likes
It concerns this early 2025 Radio Svoboda report showcasing an alleged leaked database of all Russian wounded soldiers in the war up through that time. It lists 3,200 total military amputations amongst Russia’s wounded. As Warlord writes:
Of particular note is a data point that Russian forces, as of mid-June 2024, had suffered a mere 3200 amputation wounds - including minor amputations of fingers and toes. There were some 5,283 major amputations resulting in the loss of limbs suffered by US forces in Vietnam compared to 58,281 deaths, a ratio of 11:1.
Assuming that Russian medical care in Ukraine is similar in nature to that US forces were able to provide during the Vietnam War (a reasonable assumption), this would suggest Russian forces had suffered fewer than 40,000 personnel KIA by June 2024. At the time the most conservative generally accepted estimate of Russian losses in Ukraine, Mediazona’s, was standing at almost 90,000 based on a database of social media postings of inherently dubious provenance.
A release of similar medical data from the Ukrainian side several months later in early 2025 stated that their own forces had suffered some 120,000 amputations during the war to that point. I will note that this astonishing ratio - thirty to forty Ukrainians to a single Russian, comparable to that between France and Germany in 1940 including the mass surrender of the French Army - also exactly tracks that of exchanged bodies for the last year and a half.
Food for thought.
—
As a last note, it’s interesting Ukraine reported so many shoot downs in last night’s major attack given that German journal Berliner Zeitung’s latest piece writes the opposite—that Ukraine hardly intercepts anything anymore:
The opening paragraph reads:
The Russian army appears to be increasingly successful in striking sensitive targets in Ukraine’s infrastructure. “Ukrainian air defense is currently nowhere near as good as people claim,” military expert Colonel Markus Reisner of the Austrian Armed Forces told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper. At the same time, according to Ukrainian sources, Russia is attacking energy infrastructure in various parts of the country on an almost daily basis. The population is freezing and becoming demoralized, with little prospect of improvement in sight.
Colonel Reisner goes on:
“Nowadays, successful defenses are almost unheard of,” Reisner explains. Only a very small percentage can now be shot down, and the interception rate is particularly low for cruise missiles and ballistic missiles.
“In the area of drones, it has been possible to shoot down around 70 to 80 percent, but considering the huge numbers involved, the proportion that gets through is very significant.”
What’s the reason for the lies?
According to the military expert, it is not surprising that Ukraine is not really honest in its official rhetoric: “They are trying to keep morale high. As in any war, it is also about conveying the impression in the information space that everything is fine.”
And why have the Russians been so successful recently?
So what is the main reason why Russian attacks are now having such a strong impact? According to Colonel Reisner, there are three reasons: “The first is that the Russians are constantly adapting, their ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and rockets are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and they can automatically fly around the Ukrainians’ defense mechanisms—the Ukrainians themselves say so.”
This could also be the reason:
A Ukrainian Patriot air defense system in the Dnepropetrovsk region being struck by an Iskander directed from a reconnaissance drone on January 19th.
As a result of the strike, the following were destroyed:
🟠the multifunctional radar station “AN/MPQ-65” - 1 unit;
🟠the combat control vehicle - 1 unit;
🟠the diesel generator - 1 unit.
The strike has been geolocated about 90km from the front
48.371375, 34.874961
Y