Negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are yielding apparent signs of progress, but major challenges remain on the path to a final settlement, a senior Kremlin official said Monday.

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Talks between envoys from Ukraine, Russia and the United States in recent days in Abu Dhabi were constructive and another round is planned for next week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

He reported no major breakthrough so far, however, and added: “The very fact that these contacts have begun in a constructive way can be assessed positively, but there is still serious work ahead.”

Officials revealed few details of the talks held on Friday and Saturday, which were part of a yearlong effort by the Trump administration to steer the sides toward a peace deal and end almost four years of all-out war.

While Ukrainian and Russian officials have agreed in principle with Washington’s calls for a compromise, Moscow and Kyiv differ deeply over what an agreement should look like.

Meanwhile, the grinding war of attrition along the roughly 600-mile front line snaking through eastern and southern Ukraine has dragged on, and Ukrainian civilians are enduring another winter of hardship after Russian bombardment of cities in the rear.

U.S. President Donald Trump has set out deadlines for an agreement and threatened additional sanctions on Moscow, but Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently hasn’t budged from his public demands.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also described the Abu Dhabi talks as constructive. He added Sunday that a document setting out U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in a postwar scenario is “100% ready,” although it still needs to be formally signed.

Kyiv has insisted on postwar American security commitments as part of any broader peace agreement with Moscow after Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea and support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine, followed by its full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Zelenskyy has acknowledged that there are fundamental differences between Ukrainian and Russian positions, though he said last week that peace proposals are “nearly ready.”

A central issue is whether Russia should keep or withdraw from areas of Ukraine its forces have occupied, especially Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called the Donbas, and whether it should get land there that it hasn’t yet captured.

Negotiators will return to the United Arab Emirates on Feb. 1 for another round of talks, according to a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. The weekend talks covered a broad range of military and economic matters and included the possibility of a ceasefire before a comprehensive deal, the official said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Monday that air defenses downed 40 Ukrainian drones late Sunday and early Monday, including 34 over the Krasnodar region and four over the Sea of Azov.

In this photo provided by Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade press service, servicemen fire a 2S1 Gvozdika self propelled howitzer towards Russian positions near Chasiv Yar town, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 18, 2026. (Oleg Petrasiuk/Ukraine’s 24th Mechanized Brigade via AP)

Krasnodar officials said drone fragments fell on two industrial plants in the city of Slavyansk, sparking fires that were extinguished. One person was injured, they said.

By contrast, Ukraine’s general staff said an oil refinery in the Krasnodar region was targeted by Ukrainian forces. The facility supplied the Russian military, it added.

Russian forces launched 138 drones at Ukraine overnight, 110 of which were shot down or suppressed, Ukraine’s air force said, and 21 of them hit targets in 11 locations.

By KATE BRUMBACK and JULIE WALKER, Associated Press

The U.S. work week opened with yet more snow dumping on the Northeast under the tail end of a colossal winter storm that brought ice and power outages, impassable roads, canceled flights and frigid cold to much of the southern and eastern United States.

Deep snow — over a foot extending in a 1,300-mile swath from Arkansas to New England — halted traffic, canceled flights and triggered wide school cancellations Monday.

Up to two feet were forecast in some of the harder-hit places.

In Falmouth, Massachusetts, about an hour’s drive south of Boston, snow was coming down in sheets and closing down the town.

Local minister Nell Fields had to shovel out just to be able to let her dog outside. Seven inches had fallen, with up to that much more still on the way.

“I feel that the universe just put a big, huge pause on us with all the snow,” Fields said.

On Manhattan’s Upper East Side, January Cotrel enjoyed the fresh snow on a block that always closes during snowstorms for residents to sled, throw snowballs and make snowmen.

“I pray for two feet every time we get a snowstorm. I want as much as we can get,” she said. “Let the city just shut down for a day and it’s beautiful, and then we can get back to life.”

Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storm’s wake. Overnight Sunday, the entire Lower 48 states were forecast to have their coldest average low temperature — 9.8 degrees — since January 2014.

Record warmth in Florida was the only thing keeping that average from going even colder, said former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief scientist Ryan Maue, who calculates national averages based on National Weather Service data.

From Montana to the Florida Panhandle, the weather service posted cold weather advisories and extreme cold warnings as temperatures in many places dipped to zero (minus-18 degrees Celsius) and even colder. Wind made conditions even chillier and the overnight cold threatened to refreeze roads early Monday in a cruel reprise of the weekend’s lousy travel weather.

Even with precipitation ending in Mississippi, “that doesn’t mean the danger is behind us,” Gov. Tate Reeves said in a news conference Sunday.

Freezing rain that slickened roads and brought trees and branches down on roads and power lines were the main peril in the South over the weekend. In Corinth, Mississippi, heavy machinery manufacturer Caterpillar told employees at its remanufacturing site to stay home Monday and Tuesday.

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It already was Mississippi’s worst ice storm since 1994 with its biggest-ever deployment of ice-melting chemicals — 200,000 gallons — plus salt and sand to treat icy roads, Reeves said. He urged people not to drive anywhere unless absolutely necessary. “Do please reach out to friends and family,” Reeves added.

At one point Sunday morning, about 213 million people were under some sort of winter weather warning, authorities said. Hundreds of thousands of customers were without power, according to poweroutage.us, with Tennessee and Mississippi hit especially hard.

Some 12,000 flights also were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were among those feeling the brunt of the storm with impacts expected to linger into Monday.

In New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at least five people who died were found outside as temperatures plunged Saturday, though the cause of their deaths remained under investigation. Two men died of hypothermia related to the storm in Caddo Parish in Louisiana, according to the state health department.

In Massachusetts, Fields, the minister, held church services despite the storm, saying in some ways the weather was a gift.

“I’m sorry it’s disrupted things, but it’s given us some silence, and maybe we’re using this time to think about what’s really important, and that’s community and taking care of each other,” Fields said.

Brumback reported from Atlanta. Walker reported from New York. Kristin Hall and Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, Philip Marcelo in New York, Ed White in Detroit, Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia, Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado, Jessica Hill in Las Vegas and Seth Borenstein in Houston contributed reporting.

BANGOR, Maine (AP) — A private aircraft carrying eight people crashed on takeoff Sunday night at Maine’s Bangor International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

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The Bombardier Challenger 600 crashed around 7:45 p.m., and there was no immediate word on the conditions of those aboard. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

The crash occurred as New England and much of the country grappled with a massive winter storm. Bangor had undergone steady snowfall Sunday along with many other parts of the country.

The airport issued a statement that emergency crews were on the scene at the airport, which was closed after what it described as an incident involving a single aircraft departing the airport.

Bangor International Airport offers direct flights to cities like Orlando, Florida, Washington, D.C., and Charlotte, North Carolina, and is located about 200 miles (320 kilometers) north of Boston.

Throughout the weekend, the vast storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow across much of the eastern half of the U.S., halting much air and road traffic and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in the Southeast.

Commercial air traffic was also heavily disrupted around much of the U.S.

Some 12,000 flights were canceled Sunday and nearly 20,000 were delayed, according to the flight tracker flightaware.com. Airports in Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, North Carolina, New York and New Jersey were among those impacted.

The Bombardier Challenger 600 is a wide-bodied business jet configured for nine to 11 passengers. It was launched in 1980 as the first private jet with a “walk-about cabin” and remains a popular charter option, according to aircharterservice.com

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union regulators on Monday opened a formal investigation into Elon Musk’s social media platform X after his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok started spewing nonconsensual sexualized deepfake images on the platform.

The scrutiny from Brussels comes after Grok sparked a global backlash by allowing users through its AI image generation and editing capabilities to undress people, putting females in transparent bikinis or revealing clothing. Researchers said some images appeared to include children. Some governments banned the service or issued warnings.

The 27-nation EU’s executive said it was looking into whether X has done enough as required by the bloc’s digital regulations to contain the risks of spreading illegal content such as “manipulated sexually explicit images.”

That includes content that “may amount to child sexual abuse material,” the European Commission said. These risks have now “materialized,” the commission said, exposing the bloc’s citizens to “serious harm.”

Regulators will examine whether Grok is living up to its obligations under the Digital Services Act, the bloc’s wide-ranging rulebook for keeping internet users safe from harmful content and products.

In response to a request for comment, an X spokeswoman directed The Associated Press to an earlier statement that the company remains “committed to making X a safe platform for everyone” and that it has “zero tolerance” for child sexual exploitation, nonconsensual nudity, and unwanted sexual content.

The X statement from Jan. 14 also said it would stop allowing users to depict people in “bikinis, underwear or other revealing attire,” but only in places where it’s illegal.

“Non-consensual sexual deepfakes of women and children are a violent, unacceptable form of degradation,” Henna Virkkunen, an executive vice-president at the commission.

“With this investigation, we will determine whether X has met its legal obligations under the DSA, or whether it treated rights of European citizens — including those of women and children – as collateral damage of its service,” said Virkkunen, who oversees tech sovereignty, security and democracy.

The Commission also said Monday that it’s extending a separate investigation into X over whether the platform has been following the DSA’s requirements. That probe opened in 2023 and is still ongoing. It has so far resulted in a 120 million euro (then-$140 million) fine in December for breaches of the transparency requirements.