Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,454

These are the key developments from day 1,454 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Ukrainian servicemen fire a Caesar self-propelled howitzer towards Russian troops at a position on the front line in the Zaporizhia region on Monday [Reuters]

By Ted Regencia and News Agencies

Here is where things stand on Tuesday, February 17:

Fighting

Ukraine recaptured 201 sq km (78 sq miles) of its territory from Russia between Wednesday and Sunday last week, taking advantage of a Starlink communications shutdown experienced by Russian forces, according to an analysis of battlefield data from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) conducted by the AFP news agency.
Ukrainian intelligence believes that more Russian attacks on the country’s energy sector are in store and that such tactics will make it more difficult to reach an agreement on ending the nearly four-year war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned in his nightly video address on Monday.
Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 62 long-range strike drones and six missiles of various types at Ukraine overnight.
Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that it took down 345 Ukrainian drones over the previous 24 hours. It also said it had captured two settlements – Pokrovka and Minkivka – in eastern Ukraine, Russian state media reported.
Officials in Russia’s Krasnodar region reported that a fire had broken out and was extinguished at the Black Sea port of Taman, which handles oil products, grain, coal and commodities. The port was damaged by a Ukrainian drone attack on Sunday.

Military aid

Ukraine has received 4.4 million rounds of large-calibre ammunition under a plan involving Czech arms producers and funding from foreign donors, the Czech Republic’s president, Petr Pavel, told a local news website.

Ceasefire talks

Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s negotiating team, arrived in Geneva for the next round of trilateral talks with the US and Russia. In a Telegram post, Umerov said he is looking forward “to constructive work and substantive meetings on security and humanitarian issues” on Tuesday.

Russian news agencies reported the departure of Moscow’s delegation to the talks in Geneva, which is headed by Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the main focus of the Russian negotiating team is “to discuss a broader range of issues”, including questions about territory, “and everything else related to the demands we have put forward”.

Peskov said Russian military intelligence chief Igor Kostyukov and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Mikhail Galuzin would also take part in the Geneva talks, while Putin’s special envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, would engage in a separate working group on economic issues.

Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban said that he assured US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his country still backs US peace efforts in Ukraine and that Budapest was still open to hosting a peace summit.

Politics and diplomacy

Hungary and Slovakia have asked Croatia to help them secure Russian oil following a disruption to flows through Ukraine, which the two countries have blamed on Kyiv. Hungary and Slovakia have exemptions to European Union sanctions on Russian oil that is still piped through Ukraine.

In response to the allegations of disrupting Russian oil flows, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha posted a photo on X of firefighters battling what he said was a fire at the Druzhba pipeline. In the post, he accused Hungary of not publicly commenting on the incident for two weeks because its ally, Russia, was to blame for the attack on the oil pipe.

The Kremlin said on Monday that it agreed with the statement of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who a day earlier accused Ukraine of delaying the reopening of the Druzhba pipeline to try to pressure Hungary to drop its opposition to Ukraine’s potential future EU membership.

Ukraine’s anticorruption police accused the country’s ex-energy minister, German Galushchenko, of helping launder kickbacks and stashing millions offshore, a day after he was detained trying to leave the country. Ukraine’s anticorruption agency, NABU, said it was working with 15 foreign jurisdictions to expand its corruption probe.

Ukrainian former Energy Minister German Galushchenko, centre, leaves after a court hearing over his detention, amid allegations of money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation. He was detained by law enforcement while attempting to leave Ukraine, authorities said [Serhii Okunev/AFP]

Russian oil producers could be forced to sharply cut output in the coming months as pressure from the US and European powers restricts Moscow’s exports and storage tanks fill up. Such a development could dent the Kremlin’s war chest, which funds its war on Ukraine, according to Reuters.

France has agreed to grant safe haven to the anti-Kremlin Russian activist couple Alexei and Nadezhda Ishimov, who were both detained by US law enforcement. Nadezhda, however, was prevented from leaving the US because she was using a temporary travel permit instead of a passport. The couple left Russia in 2022 as the Kremlin ramped up a crackdown on opponents following its invasion of Ukraine.