Deadly inferno
Fifteen residents died in a fire which broke out in a nursing home in Kharkiv on the afternoon of 21 January, the State Emergencies Service has said. Nine people were rescued and admitted to hospital.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed his condolences and called on the local authorities to cooperate with the executive and help the victims. He noted that there were 33 people in the nursing home when it caught fire.
According to prosecutors, the fire is believed to have been caught by mishandling of heating devices.
Donbas
A deputy head of the Russian presidential administration, Dmytro Kozak, has for the first time taken part in an online meeting of the trilateral contact group on Donbas, journalist Denys Kazanskyy has said. Kozak looked very irritated and spoke in an emotional manner, "accusing Ukraine of reluctance to recognize militants a party to the talks and demanding that we discuss a 'roadmap' proposed by Russia through its puppets".
Biden
Joe Biden's presidency will open new and broader opportunities for Ukraine to restore its territorial integrity and strengthen sovereignty, Ukraine's ex-President and European Solidarity party leader Petro Poroshenko has said. "I have no doubt that the new US leader will be a reliable ally of Ukraine," he said.
Coronavirus
The World Bank will allocate around 2.5bn hryvnyas to Ukraine to enable it to buy the coronavirus vaccine, Interfax-Ukraine has quoted Deputy Health Minister Svitlana Shatalova as saying.
On the morning of 21 January, Ukraine reported 5,583 new Covid-19 cases, 241 deaths and 13,981 recoveries.
Incident
Sen Lt Oleksandr Mulyavka from the 11th detached army aviation brigade Kherson died in the Democratic Republic of Congo on 18 January 2021, the brigade has said without specifying the cause of death.
Crime
The Security Service of Ukraine has exposed a scheme in Odesa using which an international group of maritime companies recruited Ukrainian sailors to work on tugboats in Crimea.
The main directorate of the National Police in Zhytomyr Region has dismissed the Malyn police chief over allegations of his subordinates using violence to get statements. On 20 January, the first secretary of the Ukrainian embassy in the UK, Denys Syenik, said on Facebook that his 18-year-old nephew Arsen was badly beaten by police in the village of Maklayivka, Malyn District.
Minister of Strategic Industries Vitaliy Nemilostivyy got dismissed after a video implicating him in drink driving and resisting the police was leaked online.