The death toll from a fuel truck explosion in Nigeria has climbed to 98 after additional bodies were recovered on Monday, according to the Niger state emergency agency. The blast occurred on Saturday in Dikko, Niger State, after a petrol truck overturned and ignited while people were gathering fuel from the wreckage.

Abdullahi Baba-Ara, Director-General of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency, confirmed that 80 victims were buried in a mass grave near a health center in Dikko over the weekend. “After clearing the wreckage of the Dikko tanker, we discovered 12 more bodies today, raising the death toll to 98,” Baba-Ara told Reuters.

The explosion also left 69 people hospitalized with injuries.

This tragedy is the deadliest fuel truck explosion since October, when a similar incident in Jigawa State claimed 147 lives. Such accidents have become frequent in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, as the country struggles with a severe cost-of-living crisis.

Fuel prices have soared since President Bola Tinubu removed a petrol subsidy in 2023, further straining the population and contributing to the desperation that often leads people to risk their lives collecting fuel from tanker accidents.

Hamas says next hostages will be released on Saturday as scheduled

Hamas said on Monday it would next release hostages held in Gaza on Saturday, after an official with the Palestinian militant group had said they would be released a day later than expected.

Hamas is set to release the more than 90 hostages over the coming weeks as part of a complex ceasefire deal reached with Israel this month that could end the 15-month war in Gaza.

The militant group said in a statement that the next group of hostages would next be released on Saturday in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and detainees who are held by Israel.

Earlier, Nahed Al-Fakhouri, head of the Hamas prisoners' media office, had said the hostages would be released on Sunday. Hamas had been expected to release four Israeli hostages on Saturday, seven days after the ceasefire came into effect.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, reacted to Al-Fakhouri's statement by telling Reuters the deadline for the hostages to be released was Saturday.

This month, Israel and Hamas agreed to a three-phase ceasefire that could bring an end to the 15-month war in Gaza. The ceasefire came into effect on Sunday with Hamas releasing three Israeli hostages. Israel also released Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

The ceasefire accord outlines a six-week initial ceasefire phase and includes the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and release of hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Reuters

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Ukraine detains two generals accused of negligence in defending against Russian offensive

Ukraine's State Investigation Bureau (DBR) said on Monday it had detained two generals and a colonel suspected of negligence in failing to adequately defend against a Russian offensive in the Kharkiv region last year.

The DBR said in a statement on Telegram the detained officers were the former chief commander of the Kharkiv frontline, a former commander of a brigade and a former commander of an infantry battalion. It did not give their names.

Russia launched an assault across the border in May 2024 into Ukraine's northern region of Kharkiv, advancing by several kilometres in the first few days.

The attack alarmed Ukraine, causing President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to cancel scheduled foreign trips and fire several military commanders as he dealt with the unfolding crisis.

Ukraine's military was eventually able to halt the Russian advance about 25 kilometres away from the edge of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, which Russia had unsuccessfully attempted to capture at the start of its invasion in 2022 before pulling back.

The DBR said it had co-operated with Ukraine's domestic intelligence service in the case, and had been assisted by the defence ministry and the military command.

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Russian troops liberate two communities in Donbass region over past day — top brass

Russian troops liberated two communities in the Donbass region over the past day in the special military operation in Ukraine, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported on Monday.

"Battlegroup West units liberated the settlement of Novoyegorovka in the Lugansk People’s Republic as a result of active combat operations… Battlegroup Center units kept moving deep into the enemy’s defenses and liberated the settlement of Shevchenko in the Donetsk People’s Republic," the ministry said in a statement.

Reuters/Tass

Some prominent economists argue that the revolution in artificial intelligence – particularly the rapid development of generative AI – will have only moderate effects on productivity growth but unambiguously negative effects on employment, owing to the automation of many tasks and jobs. We disagree on both counts.

When it comes to productivity growth, AI’s impact can operate through two distinct channels: automating tasks in the production of goods and services, and automating tasks in the production of new ideas. When Erik Brynjolfssonand his co-authors recently examined the impact of generative AI on customer-service agents at a US software firm, they found that productivity among workers with access to an AI assistant increased by almost 14% in the first month of use, then stabilized at a level approximately 25% higher after three months. Another study finds similarly strong productivity gains among a diverse group of knowledge workers, with lower-productivity workers experiencing the strongest initial effects, thus reducing inequality within firms.

Moving from the micro to the macro level, in a 2024 paper, we (Aghion and Bunel) considered two alternatives for estimating the impact of AI on potential growth over the next decade. The first approach exploits the parallel between the AI revolution and past technological revolutions, while the second follows Daron Acemoglu’s task-based framework, which we consider in light of the available data from existing empirical studies.

Based on the first approach, we estimate that the AI revolution should increase aggregate productivity growth by 0.8-1.3 percentage points per year over the next decade. Similarly, using Acemoglu’s task-based formula, but with our own reading of the recent empirical literature, we estimate that AI should increase aggregate productivity growth by between 0.07 and 1.24 percentage points per year, with a median estimate of 0.68. In comparison, Acemoglu projects an increase of only 0.07 percentage points.

Moreover, our estimated median should be seen as a lower bound, because it does not account for AI’s potential to automate the production of ideas. On the other hand, our estimates do not account for potential obstacles to growth, notably the lack of competition in various segments of the AI value chain, which are already controlled by the digital revolution’s superstar firms.

What about AI’s implications for overall employment? In a new study of French firm-level data collected between 2018 and 2020, we show that AI adoption is positively associated with an increase in total firm-level employment and sales. This finding is consistent with most recent studies of the firm-level effects of automation on labor demand, and it supports the view that AI adoption induces productivity gains by helping firms expand the scope of their business.

This productivity effect appears to be stronger than AI’s potential displacement effects (whereby AI takes over tasks associated with certain types of jobs and workers, thus reducing labor demand). We find that the impact of AI on labor demand is positive even for occupations that are often classified as vulnerable to automation, such as accounting, telemarketing, and secretarial work. To be sure, while certain uses of AI (such as for digital security) lead to positive employment growth, other uses (administrative processes) do tend to have small negative effects. But these differences appear to stem from different uses of AI, rather than from inherent characteristics of the affected occupations.

All told, the main risk for workers is that they will be displaced by workers at other firms using AI, rather than by AI directly. Slowing down the pace of AI adoption would likely be self-defeating for domestic employment, because many firms will be competing internationally with AI adopters.

While our interpretation of the data shows that AI could drive both growth and employment, realizing this potential will require suitable policy reforms. For example, competition policy must ensure that the superstar firms that dominate the upper segments of the value chain do not stifle entry by new innovators. Our own study finds that AI adopters are predominantly much larger and more productive than non-adopters, suggesting that those already on top are positioned to be the biggest winners of the AI revolution.

To avoid increased market concentration and entrenched market power, we must encourage AI adoption by smaller firms, which can be achieved through a combination of competition policy and suitable industrial policy that improves access to data and computing power. To enhance the employment potential of AI and minimize its negative effects on workers, broad-based access to high-quality education, together with training programs and active labor-market policies, will be crucial.

The next technological revolution is already underway. The future of entire countries and economies will hinge on their willingness and ability to adapt to it.

Project Syndicate

Behold, the once-glowing beacon of governance in Abuja—the Presidential Villa—was plunged into darkness. Not metaphorically this time (although there’s an argument to be made), but literally. The theft of 40 meters of power cables supplying electricity to the nerve center of Nigeria’s political power left its occupants fumbling for flashlights and wondering what it felt like to live like the average Nigerian. Spoiler alert: it’s not fun.

How poetic that the very symbol of power became powerless, brought low not by international intrigue or high-level espionage, but by the humble efforts of vandals armed with wire cutters and a keen eye for scrap metal profits. The Presidential Villa shared a fate long familiar to Nigerians: a sudden, inexplicable blackout and a half-hearted assurance that someone, somewhere, was working to fix it.

But let us hope that the bandits roaming the nation, who have already turned highways and villages into theaters of terror, don’t see this successful act of vandalism as a sign of weakness. What happens if they, emboldened by this small victory, decide to extend their reach into the very corridors of power? One shudders to imagine the day when the Presidential Villa’s occupants might find themselves negotiating not with world leaders, but with bandits demanding ransom.

Yet this moment should be a sobering experience for our rulers. For years, they have been insulated from the sufferings of the masses—epileptic power supply, insecurity, hunger, and roads more cratered than the moon. But now, as they sat in candlelit rooms, sweating in the heat and straining to hear the hum of a distant generator, perhaps they would understand that the dysfunction they created and which they so expertly ignore is no longer confined to the lives of ordinary Nigerians. It has reached their doorstep.

Alas, this is not the first instance of irony visiting Aso Rock. This is the same government that claims to be waging war on insecurity but cannot protect its own power cables. The same leaders who boast about the nation’s development while sending engineers scurrying to patch up basic infrastructure. If they cannot keep the lights on in the most fortified building in the country, what hope do the rest of us have?

So here we are: a country where the “giants of Africa” find themselves brought to their knees by petty thieves. The Presidential Villa may have regained its power, but the question remains: will its rulers regain their credibility? Or shall we continue to live in a nation where the greatest threat to power isn’t an opposition party, but a determined vandal with a toolbox and a dream?

President-elect Donald Trump pledged an unprecedented start to his administration during a Victory Rally in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, outlining an ambitious plan for his first week in office. Trump vowed to issue a wave of executive orders and implement sweeping reforms, promising to make voters “extremely happy.”

“You’re going to see executive orders that will set our country on the right course,” Trump said. “By the time the sun sets tomorrow, the invasion of our borders will have stopped, and illegal border trespassers will be on their way home.”

Reports indicate Trump plans to sign more than 200 executive actions on his first day in office. These include repealing what he called “radical and foolish” executive orders from the Biden administration and making classified documents related to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. publicly available.

Trump also announced plans to begin constructing the “Great Iron Dome missile defense shield” and launch the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, surpassing efforts under President Dwight Eisenhower. He pledged to tackle inflation by unleashing domestic energy resources and streamlining regulations for large-scale energy projects.

In his rally, Trump promised swift action to address natural disaster recovery in North Carolina and hinted at potential clemency for January 6 protesters, stating they would be “very, very happy.”

“This will be the biggest first week and most extraordinary first 100 days of any presidency,” Trump declared, highlighting his “all-star cabinet” of leaders.

The rally featured notable supporters, including musicians Kid Rock and Lee Greenwood, UFC CEO Dana White, tech billionaire Elon Musk, and actor Jon Voight. Voight praised Trump as “the greatest of all time,” expressing confidence in his leadership to “make America great again.”

Trump criticized outgoing President Joe Biden for taking credit for a recent ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. According to Trump, his incoming administration played a pivotal role in negotiations, facilitated by his Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff in talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

As Trump wrapped up his speech, he reaffirmed his commitment to the “America First” agenda. “It all starts tomorrow,” he said. “We will be sworn in together, and together, we will make America great again.”

The Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority (NMDPRA) has defended its decision to issue petroleum import licenses to multiple companies, citing insufficient production from the Dangote Refinery to meet national demand.

The regulatory body's position comes in response to a legal challenge by Dangote Refinery and Petrochemicals FZE, which sought to invalidate import licenses granted to the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) and several other oil companies. Dangote's lawsuit (FHC/ABJ/CS/1324/2024) alleged violations of the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA).

In a December 2024 counter-affidavit, NMDPRA senior regulatory officer Idris Musa emphasized several key points:

Production Capacity:

- Current Dangote Refinery output remains insufficient for national petroleum requirements

- The authority cannot rely solely on Dangote's unverified claims about diesel and jet fuel production capacity

- Multiple supply sources are necessary to ensure energy security

Market Competition:

- Allowing Dangote exclusive market rights would create a monopoly

- NMDPRA aims to prevent market dominance and ensure healthy competition

- The authority anticipates improved competition once NNPCL's four refineries and additional modular refineries become operational

Regulatory Compliance:

- The disputed 0.5% levy complies with PIA requirements

- Dangote's free zone status doesn't exempt it from local regulations

- The refinery maintains the right to sell products globally, not just within Nigeria

NMDPRA dismissed Dangote's allegations of conspiracy, stating the company failed to provide supporting evidence. The authority maintains that issuing additional import licenses is necessary to prevent product shortages and protect consumer interests.

The case continues, with NNPC requesting dismissal of Dangote's suit as of November 2024.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

While very few Nigerian children are still able to have tea and bread under the warm roof of their parents, many are now sourcing for their daily bread (scavenging) from refuse dumps.

Beginning from the new year, many of these children, between the ages of nine and 14, can be seen carrying sacks filled with various kinds of dirt, ranging from used cartons, empty drink cans and used plastic bottles and bowls.

Economy&Lifestyle’s encounter with Jacob Olorunfemi, a 10-year-old, revealed that the economy is dealing blows of hunger and difficulty on his parents and making him unable to attend lessons.

“I don’t go to lessons anymore because my parents said there is no money, after the Christmas celebration.
“I usually attend a lesson like school, where I pay N500 per week.

“My mother usually sweeps and wash clothes for customers.
“My father works at a bus park.

“I have a friend called Sule. He is twelve years old. He used to pick used plastics and condemned items and sell them.

“His mother beg for alms for a living.

“He advised me to join him in this scavenging routine and I have been able to save N2,000 since I started.”

Another encounter with Yekini Salam, an eleven year old, revealed that his father was late and had left him with his step mother who also had three children to take care of. This has led him to a scavenging routine for survival.

“I have not been in school for years. I dropped out when I lost my father. I don’t know who my mother is but I have a step mother and three step brothers.

“I usually hawk wares for my step mother. But last year she asked me to stop.

“Sometimes I help people run errands and they give me tokens in the form of food or cash for appreciation.

“Recently, I had to join some of my friends who are a little above my age in the scavenging routine.
“I move around places sourcing for plastics, cans and bottles.

“There are people who I sell it to. The materials are scaled and I am paid.

“I want to save enough money to learn aluminium window and door-frame construction skills.”

Commenting on the development, Amos Magbagbeola, a human rights activist said: “This is a very painful and worrisome situation presently in the country.

“You see children labouring day and night like adults just to feed.

“Such is an aftermath of the country’s present economic situation, which has degraded parents to struggling a hundred times more than they did years back to achieve the same or little outcome.

“Children are all over the streets begging for alms. These children are supposed to be in school.

“Even the public schools no longer give full free education. Children now buy their textbooks, and writing materials and even pay fees for some services rendered.

“The government needs to act fast, as this is becoming a menace in the country and doesn’t position us in a good light internationally.”

On her part, Juliana Obuh, a civil servant, said: “The situation is getting serious daily.
“Everywhere you see underage children begging alms for survival, doing all sorts of menial jobs and I wonder where their parents are.

“Even parents are living from hand to mouth now.

“The rate of poverty is now higher than before and the children are unfortunate to find themselves stuck in this predicament.

“How won’t they be used for perpetrating fraud and other evil deeds? Doing all these menial jobs harden their hearts and, because of their easy nature, they easily fall prey and remain targets of fraudsters to easily achieve their aims.

“The government needs to act fast because these children are the nation tomorrow.”

Vanguard

Hamas frees hostages, Israel releases Palestinian prisoners on day one of ceasefire

Hamas released three Israeli hostages and Israel released 90 Palestinian prisoners on Sunday, the first day of a ceasefire suspending a 15-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip and inflamed the Middle East.

The truce allowed Palestinians to return to bombed-out neighborhoods to begin rebuilding their lives, while relief trucks delivered much-needed aid. Elsewhere in Gaza, crowds cheered Hamas fighters who emerged from hiding.

Fireworks were launched in celebration as buses carrying the Palestinian prisoners arrived in Ramallah on the West Bank, where thousands of people waited to welcome them. Those freed from Israeli prisons included 69 women and 21 teenage boys from the West Bank and Jerusalem, according to Hamas.

In Tel Aviv, hundreds of Israelis cheered and wept in a square outside the defense headquarters as a live broadcast from Gaza showed three female hostages getting into a Red Cross vehicle surrounded by Hamas fighters.

The Israeli military said Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari had been reunited with their mothers and released a video showing them in apparent good health. Damari, who lost two fingers when she was shot the day she was abducted, smiled and embraced her mother as she held up a bandaged hand.

"I would like you to tell them: Romi, Doron and Emily – an entire nation embraces you. Welcome home," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a commander by phone.

At Sheba Medical Center, the women were reunited with their families in long embraces that went from tears to laughter. A smiling Damari was draped in an Israeli flag. They were among more than 250 people abducted and 1,200 killed in a Hamas raid on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has said.

More than 47,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Israeli attacks, according to medical officials in Gaza. Nearly the entire 2.3 million population of Gaza is homeless. Around 400 Israeli soldiers have also died.

The truce calls for fighting to stop, aid to be sent in to Gaza and 33 of the nearly 100 remaining Israeli and foreign hostages to go free over the six-week first phase in return for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. Many of the hostages are believed to be dead.

In the north of the Gaza Strip, Palestinians picked their way through a devastated landscape of rubble and twisted metal that had been bombed into oblivion in the war's most intense fighting.

"I feel like at last I found some water to drink after being lost in the desert for 15 months," said Aya, who said she had been displaced from her Gaza City home for more than a year.

The first phase of the truce took effect following a three-hour delay during which Israeli warplanes and artillery pounded the Gaza Strip.

That last-minute blitz killed 13 people, Palestinian health authorities said. Israel blamed Hamas for being late to deliver the names of hostages it would free, and said it had struck terrorists. Hamas said the holdup in providing the list was technical.

"Today the guns in Gaza have gone silent," U.S. President Joe Biden said on his last full day in office, welcoming a truce that had eluded U.S. diplomacy for more than a year. "We've reached this point today because of the pressure Israel built on Hamas, backed by the United States."

For Hamas, the truce provided an opportunity to emerge from the shadows after 15 months in hiding. Hamas policemen dressed in blue police uniforms swiftly deployed in some areas, and armed fighters drove through the southern city of Khan Younis, where a crowd cheered, "Greetings to Al-Qassam Brigades," the group's armed wing.

"All the resistance factions are staying in spite of Netanyahu," one fighter told Reuters.

TRUMP AIDE: 'HAMAS WILL NEVER GOVERN GAZA'

There is no detailed plan in place to govern Gaza after the war, much less rebuild it. Any return of Hamas will test the patience of Israel, which has said it will resume fighting unless the militant group is fully dismantled.

Hardline National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir quit the cabinet over the ceasefire, though his party said it would not try to bring down Netanyahu's government. The other most prominent hardliner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, stayed in the government but said he would quit if the war ends without Hamas completely destroyed.

The truce took effect on the eve of Monday's inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump's national security adviser-designate, Mike Waltz, said that if Hamas reneges on the agreement, the United States would support Israel "in doing what it has to do."

"Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable," he said.

The streets in shattered Gaza City were already busy with groups of people waving the Palestinian flag and filming the scenes on their mobile phones. Several carts loaded with household possessions travelled down a thoroughfare scattered with rubble and debris.

Ahmed Abu Ayham, 40, of Gaza City said that while the ceasefire may have spared lives, the losses and destruction made it no time for celebration.

"We are in pain, deep pain and it is time to hug one another and cry," he said.

Reuters

RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE

Blinken overruled America’s top general on Ukraine peace talks – NYT

Outgoing US State Secretary Antony Blinken urged Ukraine to continue its military efforts against Russia rather than pursue peace negotiations in 2022, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

In late 2022, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley advised Kiev to capitalize on its battlefield successes by seeking peace talks with Moscow. However, Blinken insisted that Ukraine should press on with its military campaign, the newspaper wrote.

“Less a peacemaker than a war strategist,” the US diplomat frequently argued against more “risk-averse Pentagon officials,” lobbying for advanced American weaponry to be sent to Ukraine, NYT wrote.

Washington has spent “approximately $100 billion” on Ukraine since the conflict escalated in February 2022, while allies and partners have contributed an additional $150 billion, Blinken said during a January appearance at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The outgoing Biden administration has expedited arms deliveries to Kiev ahead of the inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump, who has indicated that he might reduce military aid to Ukraine in favor of addressing domestic priorities.

The Biden administration had been covertly arming Ukraine months before the conflict intensified, Blinken admitted in a January interview with the NYT. “Starting in September and then again in December, we quietly got a lot of weapons to Ukraine to make sure that they had in hand what they needed to defend themselves – things like Stingers, Javelins that they could use,” he said.

Russia and Ukraine initially engaged in peace negotiations in early 2022 in Istanbul. Both sides provisionally agreed to a truce under which Kiev would renounce its NATO membership ambitions, adopt neutrality, and limit its military size in exchange for international security guarantees. However, Ukraine later withdrew from the talks at the urging of then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to David Arakhamia, a Zelensky-allied MP and chief negotiator for Kiev.

Last month, Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch similarly accused the US and UK of derailing peace talks between Kiev and Moscow. Speaking to the French-language media outlet Anti-Thèse, Ruch claimed that Johnson acted “on duty for the Americans.”

Moscow has reiterated its willingness to resume peace negotiations, provided they are based on the Istanbul draft agreements and reflect the “new territorial realities,” including the accession of four former Ukrainian regions to Russia and recent battlefield developments.

WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

Three killed in strike on central Kyiv, Ukraine says

Three people have been killed in a Russian air strike on Kyiv overnight, Ukrainian officials have said.

Residents in the city first heard two loud explosions and only then the wail of the air raid siren, around 06:00 (04:00 GMT). The missiles had already hit by the time the ballistic threat warning was issued, urging residents to head for shelter.

The main destruction occurred in the central Shevchenkivskyi district, where there is now a deep crater in the road outside a business centre.

A military factory in the neighbourhood has been targeted repeatedly by Russia, but the damage we saw was to civilian buildings. An official said a couple had been killed on the street inside their vehicle.

Officials earlier reported four people had died in the attack.

The metro station, nearby restaurants and businesses are also very badly damaged, and emergency workers are removing the burned wreckage of cars from the scene.

Already damaged in previous attacks on this area, the business centre's tall glass tower and main building are now a shell after being hit by either a second missile or very large fragment. It was empty when the missile struck.

Beside the main crater, a Ukrainian forensics expert examined fragments of missile collected into a heap of twisted grey metal on the pavement.

Andriy Kulchytskyy, the head of the Military Research Laboratory of the Kyiv Institute of Scientific Expertise, told the BBC the crater was from a direct hit with an Iskander-M ballistic missile, based on markings on the missile fragments.

"This specific site shows one impact," he explained. "There are additional strikes, and we have collected debris. Here, the missile directly hit the road."

Mr Kulchytskyy said the projectile landed before the warning sirens sounded because ballistic missiles travel so quickly that the sirens cannot react in time.

Beside the road, a cake shop has had its front blown off, covering pastries and pies in shattered glass.

A dental clinic next door has been destroyed in the blast. Inside, staff are trying to recover what's still intact among the wreckage.

One woman was removing baubles from a plastic Christmas tree that was still standing.

"It's happened before," she told the BBC, "but never as badly as this''.

Asked how she felt, she shrugged: "We got used to it. It's the third year of war."

"There were three explosions in a row, then a big fire glow in the sky - and the building shook. It was very loud," a young man called Oleksandr said while exiting a nearby block of flats.

"I woke up immediately - I even felt the wall shaking. When the third strike came, it was pretty scary."

On Saturday morning, the main road has been cordoned off - but a few hours after the strike the neighbouring streets nearby are already busy with traffic. Old ladies are selling chickens and gherkins outside the market, and there are joggers and people walking their dogs.

But a pensioner passing by told us she was terrified.

"I didn't know where to run, because you normally go to the metro for shelter - but it was on fire."

It is the second fatal attack on Kyiv this month,following a strike on the city on New Year's Day that left two people dead.

Meanwhile, in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, local authorities say 10 people were wounded in a Russian strike on Saturday. One woman is said to be in a serious condition.

These strikes are the latest in the war that began following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

They follow several Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory earlier in the week.

The latest strikes take place just days before the imminent inauguration of Donald Trump in the US, with many Ukrainians concerned by Trump's pledge to reduce US military and financial aid to the embattled country.

The president-elect had claimed during the campaign that he would end the conflict on the first day of his presidency, though he has since said that he may need six months.

In recent days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has reiterated the country's dependence on US support as Russian air strikes and fighting on the front line continue.

RT/BBC