By Lyndal Rowlands and News Agencies

Published On 12 Feb 202612 Feb 2026

Regional security

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Parliament that Russia will abide by limits on its nuclear weapons as set out in the recently lapsed New START arms control treaty with the United States, as long as Washington continues to do the same.
• The European Commission will work to improve Europe’s drone detection capabilities and propose expanding registration requirements for such equipment, the bloc’s executive said in a new action plan.
• US defence supplier Northrop Grumman and Polish arms group Niewiadow-PGM aim to make more than 180,000 artillery shells annually in Poland, Northrop Grumman’s managing director for Poland, Quinn Canole, said. The 155-mm shell is widely used by Ukraine in its war with Russia, but has been in short supply, and Canole did not rule out sales to Ukraine.
• The Chinese captain of a Hong Kong-registered cargo ship pleaded not guilty in a Hong Kong court to a charge of criminal damage, following allegations his vessel damaged undersea cables in the Baltic Sea, an area that has come under heightened tensions during Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Military aid

• British Defence Minister John Healey said on Wednesday that the United Kingdom had committed 150 million pounds ($205m) to the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative to supply Ukraine with US weapons.

Politics and diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he spoke to French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who briefed him about a recent visit by a French presidential aide to Moscow.
• President Zelenskyy denied a report by the Financial Times that he planned to announce a February 24 presidential election and referendum on a proposed peace deal with Russia.
• Zelenskyy told Bloomberg News that he had accepted an offer from Washington to host the next round of peace talks in the US.
• Poland and Italy will not join US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, Warsaw and Rome said, adding to the list of Ukrainian allies that have turned down invitations to join the body, which has also extended invitations to Russia and its ally Belarus.
• “Taking into account certain national doubts regarding the shape of the board, under these circumstances, Poland will not join the work of the Board of Peace, but we will analyse it,” Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk told a government meeting.
• Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said that Italy “cannot join the Board of Peace because there is an insurmountable constitutional barrier on Italy’s side”. Under Italy’s constitution, the country can only join international organisations on equal terms with other states – a condition that Rome says is not met by the board’s current statute, which gives Trump extensive executive powers.

Aid

• The Swiss government has approved an aid package for Ukraine for the supply of urgently needed energy goods of up to 32 million Swiss francs ($41.8m), it said in a statement.
• Zelenskyy welcomed news that the European Parliament would grant Ukraine a 90 billion Euro ($106bn) support loan, saying it was “exactly the signal that should be sent to [Russia as] the aggressor”.