Ukraine

These are the key developments from day 1,453 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Monday, February 16:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched attacks across Ukraine on Sunday, wounding six people in the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk region, three in the northeastern Sumy region, and two in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, the Ukrinform news outlet reported, citing local officials.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia has launched about 1,300 drones, 1,200 guided aerial bombs and dozens of ballistic missiles at Ukraine over the past week alone.
• About 1,600 buildings in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, remained without heat on Sunday following recent Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, officials said.
• Deputy Prime Minister Oleksii Kuleba said Russian strikes overnight on Sunday had damaged railroad infrastructure in the southern region of Odesa and the Dnipropetrovsk region.
• The Ukrainian military said in a statement that it hit a key oil terminal in southern Russia, near the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula, on Sunday. The attack was on the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal near the village of Volna in the Krasnodar region.
• Ukrainian forces also launched a drone attack on the Russian Black Sea port of Taman, which handles oil products, grain, coal and commodities, causing damage and triggering several fires, according to Veniamin Kondratyev, the governor of Russia’s Krasnodar region. He said more than 100 people were working to put out the fires.
• Kondratyev said there were more Ukrainian attacks on the Russian resort city of Sochi and the village of Yurovka, close to the seaside town of Anapa. They caused less significant damage, he added.

• Russian air defences downed five drones approaching the Russian capital, Moscow, according to Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
• A Ukrainian attack also left five municipalities in the Russian border region of Bryansk and parts of its capital without heat and electricity, Governor Alexander Bogomaz said.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Sunday that its troops had taken the village of Tsvitkove in the southeastern Zaporizhia region, according to the TASS news agency. Russia controls about 75 percent of the Zaporizhia region, but battle lines had been largely static since 2022 until recent Russian advances.
• Russia’s army chief, Valery Gerasimov, said on Sunday that Russian troops had seized a dozen villages in eastern Ukraine in February. He made the announcement while visiting Russian troops in Ukraine, the AFP news agency reported.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested the country’s former energy minister, German Galushchenko, who resigned in November amid a huge corruption scandal, as he tried to cross Ukraine’s border.
• Zelenskyy said in a statement that Ukraine has agreed to new energy and military support packages with European allies.
• The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she felt that the bloc’s governments were not ready to give Ukraine a date for membership into the EU, despite demands from Zelenskyy.
• Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics echoed Kallas’s comments, saying that “there is no readiness to accept a date” for Ukrainian membership. He added that he has little hope of an imminent peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.
• Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has accused Ukraine of delaying the restart of a pipeline carrying Russian oil to Eastern Europe via Ukraine to “blackmail” Hungary to drop its opposition to Ukraine’s future EU membership.
• North Korean leader Kim Jong Un presided over the completion ceremony of a new housing district in Pyongyang for families of troops who died in overseas military operations, state media KCNA reported. It is believed that more than 6,000 North Korean soldiers were killed while fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine.
• Russia will not end the militarisation of its economy after fighting in Ukraine ends, the head of Latvia’s intelligence agency, Egils Zviedris, told the AFP news agency on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, which ended on Sunday.

German Galushchenko was detained by Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau while trying to leave the country.

Ukraine’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) says it has arrested the country’s former energy minister, German Galushchenko, who resigned in November amid a massive corruption scandal, as he tried to cross Ukraine’s border.

“Today, while crossing the state border, NABU detectives have detained the former Minister of Energy as part of the ‘Midas’ case,” the NABU said in a statement.

It did not name Galushchenko in its statement, but he served as the country’s energy minister last year and resigned in November.

“Initial investigative proceedings are ongoing, carried out in accordance with the requirements of the law and court sanctions. Details to follow,” the NABU added.

Galushchenko was one of several ministers who resigned in 2025 as the NABU unveiled an alleged money-laundering conspiracy in the country’s energy sector that investigators believe was orchestrated by an ally of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

According to Ukraine’s Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), the alleged $100m scheme was orchestrated by businessman Timur Mindich.

SAPO’s investigators say Galushchenko helped Mindich manage illicit financial flows in the energy sector, while contractors working with Energoatom were forced to pay bribes of 10 to 15 percent to avoid losing contracts or facing payment delays.

Ukraine’s previous two energy ministers had resigned amid the fallout from the scandal, which ⁠also claimed the job of Zelenskyy’s chief of staff.

The two ministers ⁠and the chief of staff ⁠have all denied wrongdoing.

Battling corruption is a key priority in Ukraine’s reform effort as it eyes membership in the European Union, ‌which requires the country to shake off a decades-old scourge of graft.

Authorities in recent weeks have targeted lawmakers, ‌former Prime ‌Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and a former presidential adviser over various charges.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has expressed hope for United States-brokered peace talks with Russia next week, but warned that Kyiv was being asked “too often” to make concessions and pressed his allies for “clear security guarantees”.

Zelenskyy’s speech at the annual Munich Security Conference on Saturday came as US President Donald Trump seeks to broker a deal to end Europe’s biggest war since 1945.

Ukraine and Russia, which ⁠invaded its neighbour in February 2022, have engaged in two recent rounds of talks mediated by Washington in Abu Dhabi, UAE, described by the parties as constructive but achieving no breakthroughs.

The three sides are due to sit down in Geneva, Switzerland, again this week.

In his speech, Zelenskyy said he hoped the trilateral talks in Geneva on Tuesday and Wednesday “will be serious, substantive” and “helpful for all of us”.

“But honestly, sometimes it feels like the sides are talking about completely different things,” Zelenskyy said.

“The Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often those concessions are discussed only in the context of Ukraine, not Russia,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader also argued that there would be a greater chance of ending the war if European countries had a seat at the negotiating table, something Moscow has opposed.

“Europe is practically not present at the table. It’s a big mistake to my mind,” he said. And Ukraine, he said, “keeps returning to one simple point”.

“Peace can only be built on clear security guarantees. Where there is no clear security system, war always returns,” Zelenskyy said.

Among the most contentious issues in the negotiations is Russia’s demand for a full withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the remaining parts of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donetsk that it still controls. Ukraine has rejected a unilateral pullback, while also demanding Western security guarantees to deter Russia from relaunching its invasion if a ceasefire is reached.

Zelenskyy, in remarks to reporters, said the US had proposed a security guarantee lasting for 15 years after the war, but Ukraine wanted a deal for 20 years or longer. He added that Putin opposes the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine, as it would deter any future aggression by Russia.

Zelenskyy said Russia had to accept a ceasefire monitoring ‌mission ‌and an exchange of prisoners of war. He estimated that Russia currently has about 7,000 Ukrainian soldiers, while Kyiv has more than 4,000 Russian personnel.

He also acknowledged feeling “a little bit” of pressure from Trump, who on Friday urged him not to miss the “opportunity” to make peace and told him “to get moving”. Zelenskyy also called for greater action from Ukraine’s allies to press Russia into making peace, both in the form of tougher sanctions and more weapons supplies.

Trump has the power to force Putin to declare a ceasefire and ‌needs to do so, Zelenskyy said. Ukrainian officials have said a ceasefire is required to hold a referendum on any peace deal, which would be organised alongside national elections.

Zelenskyy also expressed surprise at Russia’s decision to change its delegation to the Geneva talks and said it suggested to ⁠him that Russia wanted to delay any decisions from being agreed.

The Kremlin had said the Russian delegation would be led by Putin’s adviser Vladimir Medinsky, a change from negotiations in Abu Dhabi, where military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov was in the lead. Ukrainian officials have criticised Medinsky’s handling of previous talks, accusing him of delivering history ⁠lessons to the Ukrainian team instead of engaging in constructive negotiations.

In his main speech at the Munich event, Zelenskyy also denounced Putin as a “slave to war”.

He drew parallels between the current talks and the 1938 Munich Agreement, when European powers let Hitler take part of the erstwhile Czechoslovakia, only for World War II to break out the following year.

“It would be an illusion to believe that this war can now be reliably ended by dividing Ukraine, just as it was an illusion to believe that sacrificing Czechoslovakia would save Europe from a great war,” he warned.