Zelenskyy

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.

Kremlin spokesperson says Russian forces would continue fighting until Kyiv makes necessary ‘decisions’ to end the war.

The number of Ukrainian soldiers killed on the battlefield as a result of the country’s war with Russia is estimated to be 55,000, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that a “large number” were also missing.

President Zelenskyy’s remarks on Wednesday came in the run-up to the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid crucial ceasefire talks in Abu Dhabi, where negotiators are trying to end Europe’s largest conflict since World War II.

“In Ukraine, officially the number of soldiers killed on the battlefield – either professionals or those conscripted – is 55,000,” said Zelenskyy, in a prerecorded interview with France 2 TV.

Zelenskyy, whose comments were translated into French, added that on top of that casualty figure was a “large number of people” considered officially missing.

The Ukrainian leader did not give an exact figure for those who are still missing.

Zelenskyy had previously cited a figure for Ukrainian war dead in an interview with the United States television network NBC in February 2025, saying that more than 46,000 Ukrainian service members had been killed on the battlefield.

In the middle of 2025, the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, estimated that close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed or wounded since the war began.

Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine reported that Russian attacks had killed 2,514 civilians and injured 12,142 in Ukraine in 2025, almost a third higher than the number of casualties in 2024.

Russia has also incurred heavy losses in the ongoing war.

In January, Ukraine’s military commander, Oleksandr Syrskii, was quoted as saying that in 2025 alone, almost 420,000 Russian soldiers were killed and wounded while fighting against Ukrainian forces.

An October 2025 estimate by British defence intelligence put the overall number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in the war at 1.1 million.

Both Ukraine and Russia rarely disclose their own casualty figures in the war, though they actively report enemy losses on the battlefield.

Analysts say both Kyiv and Moscow are likely underreporting their own deaths while inflating those of the other side.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that Russia would keep fighting until Kyiv made the “decisions” that could bring the war to an end, while in Abu Dhabi, Ukrainian and Russian officials wrapped up a “productive” first day of new US-brokered talks, Kyiv’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov said.

US President Donald Trump’s administration has been pushing both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the fighting, although the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks.

The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which now sits in a Russian-occupied area of Ukraine.

Moscow has demanded that Kyiv pull its troops out of all the Donbas region, including heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences against Russian aggression, as a condition for any deal to end the fighting.

Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces from territory it still controls.

Russian forces occupy about 20 percent of Ukraine’s territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he has ordered Ukraine’s military leaders to respond after a spate of Russian attacks targeting railway infrastructure and logistics routes.

His comments on Monday come after Russian forces stepped up attacks, including on a train last week that killed five people in a railway car in the eastern region of Kharkiv.

Ukraine has managed to keep its nationwide rail network running despite almost four years of war. Russian forces have prioritised the capture of train hubs, such as Kupiansk and Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine.

“The Russian army remains focused on terror against our logistics – primarily railway infrastructure,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media. “In particular there were strikes in the Dnipro region and in Zaporizhzhia, specifically targeting railway facilities.”

State railway operator Ukrzaliznytsia warned that several of its routes in eastern Ukraine are becoming increasingly “high risk” and urged passengers to instead take buses.

In the eastern region of Sumy, Ukrzaliznytsia said it will monitor Russian drone threats and stop trains near bomb shelters if they emerge.

‘Very complex’ negotiations

Russian drones and missiles have continued to bombard civilian areas, killing 12 miners in a bus on Sunday in the most recent mass aerial attack. The barrages are also wrecking the Ukrainian power grid, leaving people without heating, light and running water in bitter winter cold.

The attacks come as a new round of US-brokered talks on ending the war are set to go ahead this week after a brief postponement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said discussions will take place on Wednesday and Thursday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, where a meeting was held last month.

On Sunday, Zelenskyy said he will send a delegation.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration over the past year has pushed the two sides to find compromises to end the war. But breaking the deadlock on key issues appears no closer as the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbour approaches this month.

Peskov described the negotiations as “very complex”.

“On some issues, we have certainly come closer because there have been discussions, conversations and on some issues it is easier to find common ground,” he told reporters. “There are issues where it’s more difficult to find common ground.”

Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev was in Miami, Florida, at the weekend for talks with American officials, but Peskov refused to provide any details of the meeting.

A key sticking point is whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian territory its army has occupied, especially in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland. Moscow is also demanding possession of other Ukrainian land there that it hasn’t been able to capture on the battlefield.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding ground, saying such a move would only embolden Moscow, and it has refused to sign any deal that might fail to deter Russia from invading again.

After failing in its aim of a lightning offensive to capture Kyiv and topple Ukraine’s leadership in a matter of days in 2022, Russia has been bogged down in the face of Ukrainian defences and is now mounting a grinding advance that has come at a huge human cost.

Second round of talks to follow negotiations last month that appeared to make little progress on key issue of territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says a second round of trilateral talks on ending the war with Russia will take place in Abu Dhabi this week as the fate of a temporary energy ceasefire hangs in the balance.

Zelenskyy, whose country’s energy system has come under relentless attack in one of the coldest winters in years, said envoys from the United States, Russia and Ukraine would meet in Abu Dhabi on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Ukraine is ready for a substantive discussion, and we are interested in ensuring that the outcome brings us closer to a real and dignified end to the war,” he said on Sunday amid continuing US pressure to reach a deal with Russia after almost four years of war.

The first round of trilateral negotiations took place in late January but appeared to make little progress on the vital question of territory. Moscow still is demanding Kyiv cede a fifth of the Donetsk region that it still controls, which Zelenskyy’s government is refusing to do. The next round had been scheduled to take place on Sunday but may have been delayed because of the US-Iran crisis.

US President Donald Trump, who has said he wants to be remembered as a “peacemaker”, has repeatedly said a deal to end the Ukraine war is close and on Thursday announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to stop strikes on energy targets for a week due to cold weather.

The terms of his agreement with Putin were not clear, but the Kremlin said on Friday that it had agreed to halt strikes on energy infrastructure until Sunday. Ukraine appeared to believe the suspension was supposed to last until the following Friday.

Medvedev says Russian victory near

Meanwhile, US envoy Steve Witkoff said on Saturday that he held constructive talks with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev in Florida.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and White House senior adviser Josh Gruenbaum also attended the talks. Witkoff said afterwards that he was “encouraged by this meeting that Russia is working toward securing peace in Ukraine”.

On Sunday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev praised Trump as a “peacemaker”, telling the Reuters news agency that Russia would “soon” achieve a military victory in the Ukraine war.

“But it is equally important to think about what will happen next. After all, the goal of victory is to prevent new conflicts. This is absolutely obvious,” said the hawkish former president, who now serves as deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council.

Neither Ukraine nor Russia have reported major strikes on their energy infrastructure in recent days although Zelenskyy said Russia was trying “to destroy logistics and connectivity between cities and communities” through air attacks.

In southeastern Ukraine, two people were killed overnight in a drone strike on a residential building in the city of Dnipro, and six people were wounded in an attack on a maternity hospital in Zaporizhzhia, regional officials said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to increase his armed forces’ lethality as part of a strategy to disarm Moscow and turn a deadlocked negotiating table.

“The task of Ukrainian units is to ensure a level of destruction of the occupier at which Russian losses exceed the number of reinforcements they can send to their forces each month,” he told military personnel on Monday.

“We are talking about 50,000 Russian losses per month, this is the optimal level,” he said.

Video analysis, Zelenskyy recently said, showed 35,000 confirmed kills in December 2025, up from 30,000 in November and 26,000 in October. But on Monday, he clarified that the 35,000 were “killed and badly wounded occupiers”, who would not be returning to the battlefield.

His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, conservatively estimated “more than 33,000” confirmed kills in December.

Ukraine believes it has killed or maimed 1.2 million Russians since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies recently estimated that Russia had suffered 1.2mn casualties, including at least 325,000 deaths, and Ukraine up to 600,000 casualties, with as many as 140,000 deaths.

Al Jazeera cannot confirm casualty estimates from either side.

The war is currently stalemated, with Russia struggling to make meaningful territorial gains.

Russia held just more than a quarter of Ukraine a month into its full-scale war, in March 2022, according to geolocated footage.

The following month, Ukraine pushed Russian forces back from a string of northern cities – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv – leaving Russia in possession of one-fifth of the country.

In August and September 2022, then-ground forces commander Syrskii masterminded a campaign to push Russian forces east of the Oskil River in the northern Kharkiv region, and Russia itself withdrew east of the Dnipro River in the southern region of Kherson, leaving it with 17.8 percent of the country.

In the last three years, Russia increased that number to 19.3 percent.

For almost six months, Russia has struggled to seize two towns it has almost surrounded with 150,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.

“In Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, the Ukrainian Defence Forces continue to contain the enemy, which is trying to infiltrate the northern districts of both cities in small groups,” Syrskii said last week.

Russia claimed it had captured the northern city of Kupiansk last month, but Russian military reporters say Ukrainian forces have retaken control of the town and surrounded the Russian assault force within it.

The engine of war

Zelenskyy’s strategy involves increasing domestic drone production and honing the skills of drone operators, because drones now hit 80 percent of targets on the battlefield.

“In just the past year alone, 819,737 targets were hit – hit by drones. And we clearly record every single hit,” he said on Monday.

The military has instituted a point system, rewarding drone operators for the number and precision of their hits.

That reflects a system put in place in April 2024, offering financial rewards to ground troops for destroying Russian battlefield equipment, culminating in $23,000 for capturing a battle tank.

Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister this month, who previously served as digital transformation minister and deputy prime minister for innovation, education, science and technology.

Last week, Fedorov began to appoint his advisers. They include Serhiy Sternenko, who last year created Ukraine’s largest non-state supplier of military drones, to step up drone production. Fedorov’s former deputy at the digital transformation ministry, Valeriya Ionan, was put in charge of international collaborations, thanks to her experience with Silicon Valley giants like Google and Cisco. Fedorov also appointed Serhiy Beskrestnov as technological adviser. Beskrestnov is an expert on Russian drone and electronic warfare innovation.

Russian assaults pound Ukraine

Zelenskyy’s war aims stem in part from the fact that Russia refuses to give up its campaign to seize more of Ukraine.

Despite US President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire, talks remain deadlocked over the future of Donetsk.

Russia’s worst attack against Ukrainian cities and energy facilities last week came on Saturday, involving 375 drones and 21 missiles, as Russian, US and Ukrainian delegations were negotiating a ceasefire in Abu Dhabi.

The strike left 1.2 million homes without power nationwide, including 6,000 in Kyiv.

Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said 800,000 homes in Kyiv were still without power following three previous strikes this month. “Constant enemy attacks unfortunately keep the situation from being stabilised,” he wrote on social media.

Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an evening video address that electricity supply problems were still widespread in Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions.

“We are scaling up assistance points and warming centers,” he said, adding that 174 [crews] were working to fix the damage in Kyiv alone. Shmyal said 710,000 people were still without power in Kyiv.

A Czech grassroots initiative fundraised $6m to buy hundreds of electric generators for Ukrainian households. On Friday, the European Commission said it was sending 447 generators to Ukraine.

On Wednesday, Russian drones killed three people. Two of them were a young couple in Kyiv killed when a drone struck their apartment building. Rescuers found only their four-year-old daughter alive.

“When I carried her out, the girl started crying very hard, and then she began to shake violently,” said Marian Kushnir, a journalist who was a neighbour of the couple.

At least five more people died when a drone struck a passenger train in the northern Kharkiv region, and two children and a pregnant woman were wounded when 50 drones rained down on the southern port of Odesa.

Talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a ceasefire. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said before they began that Russia was not willing to compromise on any of its territorial demands.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks were focusing on the nub of disagreement between the two sides, which is Ukraine’s refusal to hand over the remaining one-fifth of Donetsk that Moscow does not control.

Talks are scheduled to continue in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, officials said.

Unvarnished truth from Zelenskyy

In a scathing speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelenskyy accused his European allies of “wait-hoping” the Russian threat would disappear after almost four years of war in Ukraine.

“Europe relies only on the belief that if danger comes, NATO will act. But no one has really seen the Alliance in action. If Putin decides to take Lithuania or strike Poland, who will respond?” Zelenskyy asked.

US President Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland by force on January 17, he said, revealed Europe’s lack of readiness when seven Nordic countries sent 40 soldiers to the island.

“If you send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland – what is that for? What message does it send? What’s the message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin? To China? And even more importantly, what message does it send to Denmark – the most important – your close ally?”

In contrast, said Zelenskyy, Trump was willing to seize Russian tankers selling sanctioned oil, and put Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug charges, while Putin, an indicted war criminal, remained free. “No security guarantees work without the US,” he said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte echoed those sentiments in a speech to the European Parliament on Monday [January 26].

“If anyone thinks here . . . that the European Union or Europe as a whole can defend itself without the US, keep on dreaming,” he said. “You can’t.”