Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,452 

Here is where things stand on Sunday, February 15:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched a drone attack on the Ukrainian city of Odesa overnight on Saturday, killing an elderly woman and damaging residential buildings, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
• A Russian civilian was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s border region of Bryansk on Saturday, according to Governor Alexander Bogomaz.
• Ukrainian forces also launched a “massive drone attack” on a village in the Russian-occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine, wounding at least 19 people, the Russian TASS news agency reported on Saturday, citing local officials.
• At least one person was wounded in a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia region of Ukraine, TASS reported.
• Two others were injured in another Ukrainian attack on the Russian border region of Belgorod, TASS reported on Saturday.
• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Russia is suffering “crazy losses” in Ukraine, losing about 65,000 soldiers over the last two months. He also told a media roundtable at the Munich Security Conference that the NATO alliance was strong enough that Russia would not currently try to attack it.
• United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Munich that Russia was losing 7,000 to 8,000 soldiers a week in its ongoing war on Ukraine.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian attacks across Ukraine had damaged every power plant in the country, as he denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin as a “slave to war”.

Ceasefire talks

• Zelenskyy wrote on X that he had spoken by phone to US envoy Steve Witkoff and US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, ahead of the next round of ceasefire talks in Geneva.
• Earlier in Munich, Zelenskyy voiced hope that the Geneva talks would be substantive, but added that Ukraine was being asked “too often” by the US to make concessions. He said he also wanted to hear what compromises Moscow would be ready to accept.
• Zelenskyy said he was feeling “a little bit” of pressure from Trump, who recently said the Ukrainian should not miss the “opportunity” to make peace with Russia soon, and urged him “to get moving”.
• He also accused Moscow of seeking to delay decisions by changing its lead negotiator – from the military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov during Abu Dhabi talks to President Vladimir Putin’s adviser, Vladimir Medinsky, in the Geneva round.
• Zelenskyy said that US negotiators had told Ukraine the Russians had promised a swift end to the war if Ukrainian forces immediately withdrew from the part of the eastern Donetsk region that it still controls. Ukraine had rejected that idea and instead expressed a readiness to discuss a US plan for a free trade zone in the region, while freezing the rest of the 1,200km (745-mile) front line.
• Ukraine’s chief negotiator, Rustem Umerov, said the only two options Kyiv is willing to accept are sticking to the current lines of control or the establishment of a free trade zone.
• Zelenskyy said he hoped the US would stay involved in the negotiations and that there would be an opportunity for Europe to play a bigger role. “Europe is practically not present at the table,” he said.
• Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi told his audience in Munich that he agrees with Zelenskyy’s assessment that Europe should be more involved in efforts to end the war in Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy added that Russia had to accept a ceasefire monitoring mission and an exchange of prisoners of war. He estimated that Russia currently had about 7,000 Ukrainian troops, while Kyiv had more than 4,000 Russians.
• He also suggested that Moscow was opposed to the deployment of French and UK troops in Ukraine after the war, which Paris and London have said they are willing to do, because Russia’s Putin “wants to have the opportunity to come back”.

Politics and diplomacy

• French Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot said some G7 countries had expressed a willingness to move ahead with a maritime services ban on Russian oil, and France is “reasonably optimistic a deal can be reached”. He said the EU is currently preparing its 20th sanctions package against Moscow.
• Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund agreed to ease some conditions, including sensitive tax increases, for a new $8.2bn lending programme, Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said.
• The European Union should “bring to life” a mutual defence pact anchored in its founding treaty, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Munich, as the regional bloc faces new threats from Russia.

Olympics

• Zelenskyy awarded a top state honour to Olympic skeleton racer Vladyslav Heraskevych, who was disqualified from the Winter Olympic Games in Italy for wearing a helmet commemorating athletes killed in the war with Russia. Speaking in Munich, Zelenskyy said he had great respect for “all the Olympians who supported you and your position”.