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

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.
• Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia launched 62 long-range strike drones and six missiles of various types at Ukraine overnight.

Military aid

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.
• 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.

• 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.