MILAN (AP) — Two years before the Los Angeles Olympics, the United States is already dominating the narrative in the run-up to the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Winter Games.
International Olympic Committee officials, including President Kirsty Coventry, couldn’t avoid questions relating to ICE and the Jeffrey Epstein files at a news conference in Milan on Sunday.
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IOC President Kirsty Coventry, top center, sits at the head of the table at the start of the IOC Executive Board meeting at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, Pool)
People take part in an Anti-ICE demonstration, ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
People take part in an Anti-ICE demonstration, ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry meets the media in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)
Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry meets the media in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)
Coventry tried to fend them off by saying it was not the IOC’s place to comment on the issues but when pressed admitted it was “sad” that such stories were deflecting attention away from the upcoming Olympics.
“I think anything that is distracting from these Games is sad, right? But we’ve learned over the many years … there’s always been something that has taken the lead, leading up to the Games,” Coventry said. “Whether it has been Zika, COVID, there has always been something.
“But what is keeping my faith alive is that when that opening ceremony happens and those athletes start competing, suddenly the world remembers the magic and the spirit that the games have and they get to suddenly remember what’s actually important and they get to be inspired and so we’re really looking forward to that.”
Hundreds of demonstrators gathered Saturday in Milan to protest the deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents during the upcoming Winter Olympics, unbothered by the fact that agents would be stationed in a control room and not operating on the streets.
Meanwhile, the latest collection of government files released on Epstein include emails from 2003 between Casey Wasserman, the head of the Los Angeles Olympics organizing committee, and Epstein’s one-time girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
“From all the information that we have and I believe that the US authorities, as the other authorities, have made all the clarifications needed, so from our side that’s not for us to further comment on that part of the security. But we’re really looking forward to the games,” Coventry said when asked about the presence of ICE agents in Milan.
She was even less responsive when asked about Wasserman.
“We didn’t discuss it yesterday and I believe Mr. Wasserman has put out his statement and we now have nothing further to add,” Coventry said.
Two IOC members were mentioned in the documents, although there is no suggestion they did anything wrong.
They are: Richard Carrion, a Puerto Rican banker who finished runner-up to former IOC president Thomas Bach in the 2013 election; and Johan Eliasch, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation president who was one of Coventry’s opponents last March.
“I’ve not been in contact with Casey, the focus has fully been on Milano Cortina, there’s been a number of things that we’ve been focusing on here,” said Coventry, who was elected just over 10 months ago and is the first female IOC president.
“In terms of IOC members, we’re obviously watching and monitoring the media and we’re aware of a few things that have been reported just today and we need some time to look into that and to be given intel.”
The upcoming Olympics run from Feb. 6-22. U.S. Vice President JD Vance will lead an American delegation to the Milan Cortina Games and attend Friday's opening ceremony.
AP Winter Olympics at https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
IOC President Kirsty Coventry, top center, sits at the head of the table at the start of the IOC Executive Board meeting at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, Pool)
People take part in an Anti-ICE demonstration, ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
People take part in an Anti-ICE demonstration, ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Milan, Italy, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry meets the media in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)
Olympic Committee President Kirsty Coventry meets the media in Milan, Italy, Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026. (Claudio Furlan/LaPresse via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro hit a bus carrying mineworkers and killed at least a dozen people, Ukrainian authorities said Sunday, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that the next round of peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations will take place on Wednesday and Thursday.
The strike injured several more people and sparked a fire that was subsequently put out, according to the emergency services.
DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private energy company, said it owned the bus and accused Russia of carrying out “a large-scale terrorist attack on DTEK mines in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” whose capital is Dnipro.
“The epicenter of one of the attacks was a company bus transporting miners from the enterprise after a shift in the Dnipropetrovsk region,” the company said in a Telegram post.
The strike came days after U.S. President Donald Trump said the Kremlin had agreed to temporarily halt the targeting of the Ukrainian capital and other cities, as the region suffers under freezing temperatures that have brought widespread hardship to Ukrainians.
Ukrainian Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal on Sunday called the strike in Dnipro “a cynical and targeted attack on energy sector workers," and said it occured near the Ternivska mine east of the city.
Hours earlier, Ukraine's emergency services reported that Russian attack drones injured six people at a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, southern Ukraine, on Sunday morning.
Meanwhile, envoys from Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. had been expected to meet Sunday in Abu Dhabi to continue negotiations aimed at ending Moscow’s all-out invasion of its neighbor. But on Sunday morning, Zelenskyy announced that they would take place next week instead.
“We have just had a report from our negotiating team. The dates for the next trilateral meetings have been set: Feb. 4 and 5 in Abu Dhabi. Ukraine is ready for substantive talks, and we are interested in an outcome that will bring us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post.
There was no immediate comment from U.S. or Russian officials.
On Saturday afternoon, top Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said he had held a “constructive meeting with the U.S. peacemaking delegation” in Florida.
Officials have so far revealed few details of the talks in Abu Dhabi, which are 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.
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.
Earlier on Sunday, Russian attack drones struck a maternity hospital in southern Ukraine, the Ukrainian emergency service reported.
In a Telegram post, it said the strike wounded three women in the hospital in Zaporizhzhia, and also sparked a fire in the gynecology reception area that was later extinguished. Regional administration head Ivan Fedorov later said the number of injured had risen to six.
The Kremlin confirmed Friday it agreed to hold off striking Kyiv until Sunday, but refused to reveal any details, making it difficult for an independent assessment of whether the conciliatory step had indeed taken place.
In the past week, Russia has struck energy assets in the southern Ukrainian city of Odesa and in Kharkiv in the northeast. It also hit the Kyiv region on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring four.
Overnight into Sunday, Russia launched 90 attack drones, with 14 striking nine locations, Ukraine’s air force said in a Telegram post. A woman and a man were killed in an overnight drone strike in Dnipro, according to local administration head Oleksandr Hanzha.
Russian shelling also hit central Kherson, a city in southern Ukraine, soon after 7 a.m., seriously wounding a 59-year-old woman, according to a Facebook post by the municipal military administration.
Russia's Defense Ministry on Sunday morning said its forces had used operational-tactical aviation, attack drones, missile forces and artillery to strike transport infrastructure used by Ukrainian forces.
In a separate post Sunday, it said that Russian air defenses shot down 21 Ukrainian drones flying over southwestern and western Russia. It did not mention any casualties or damage.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Veterans of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade of Ukraine's Armed Forces serve free hot meals in a residential neighborhood for people without power in their homes in Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2026.(AP Photo/Vladyslav Musiienko)
Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev, left, gestures speaking to U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Jared Kushner prior to their meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin, in Moscow, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
U.S. President Donald Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, left, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, second left, Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev, second right, and Trump's envoy Jared Kushner talk to each other prior to their meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Senate Palace of the Kremlin, in Moscow, Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026. (Alexander Kazakov/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks during a joint press conference with Lithuania's President Gitanas Nauseda and Polish President Karol Nawrocki, at the Presidential palace in Vilnius, Lithuania, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Mindaugas Kulbis)
