Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events – day 1,091

Here is the situation on Wednesday, February 19:

Fighting

• Russia said its air defences downed 21 Ukrainian drones in the space of an hour overnight, most over Russia’s western Bryansk region. One drone was also downed over Russian-annexed Crimea.
• On the eastern front of Ukraine, Kyiv’s forces claimed to have fired a self-propelled howitzer artillery cannon at a North Korean machinegun. A Ukrainian drone struck a North Korean Koksan howitzer in 1978, according to Kyiv, for the first time since the start of the conflict with Russia.
• Up to 12 000 North Korean soldiers, along with their military equipment, and Russian forces have been stationed in the Kursk region of southern Russia, according to Ukraine and Western military experts.
• Ukrainian forces engaged in 144 clashes with Russian troops on Tuesday, repelling multiple assaults across different front lines, according to the Ukrainian military, Turkiye’s official Anadolu news agency reports.

• Kyiv also said that Russian forces launched two missile strikes and 72 air strikes, and used 1, 024 kamikaze drones, along with 4, 200 artillery attacks that targeted Ukrainian positions and settlements, AA reports.
• In Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Ukrainian forces said they prevented Russian advances towards Mala Shapkivka and Topoli, while Moscow’s troops launched 16 attacks in Ukraine’s Kupiansk region, with Kyiv’s forces claiming to have repelled 14, as battles continue, Anadolu reports.
• Following a Ukrainian drone attack on a pumping station, Russia reported that oil flows through the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, a significant route that supplies Kazakhstan and exports to the world, have been reduced by 30 to 40%.
• The Caspian pipeline, which ships more than 1 percent of daily global oil supplies, stretches over 1, 500km (939 miles) and carries crude oil from Kazakhstan’s Tengiz oilfield on Russia’s northeastern shores of the Caspian Sea as well as from Russian producers.
• Former chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov said that the Russian government’s survival depends on winning the war and Vladimir Putin’s government’s demise. “There is no freedom of Russia, no end of the Putin regime, without Ukrainian victory”, said Kasparov, 61, who retired from chess in 2005 to focus on political activism, and has lived in exile in New York for the past decade.

US plans for Ukraine

• Following discussions that drew a strong rebuke from Ukraine over its inclusion in the Saudi Arabian meeting between Washington and Moscow officials, Russia and the United States came to establish teams to work on a plan to end Moscow’s conflict with Ukraine.
• Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, criticized his country’s withdrawal from the talks in Riyadh, calling for fair negotiations to end the war and involving European nations, including Turkiye, who has offered to host upcoming discussions.
• At the Riyadh talks, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio agreed to “appoint respective high-level teams to begin working on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible,” according to the US State Department.
• Washington said the two sides had agreed to “establish a consultation mechanism” to address “irritants” to the US-Russia relationship, noting the sides would lay the groundwork for future cooperation.
• Rubio later provided a report that the US told its European allies that it would “at some point” have a seat at the negotiating table in addition to reports that it had previously given counterparts from France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.

• After the talks, US President Donald Trump declared to reporters that he had the power to end the conflict in Ukraine.
• Trump then criticized Kyiv and Europe for complaining that Moscow had been cut out of the discussions. “Today, I heard, ‘ Oh, well, we weren’t invited’. Well, you’ve been there for three years”, Trump said, referring to the war. You ought to have never begun it. You could have made a deal… A half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives”, Trump said, echoing his frequent claim that he could have prevented Russia’s full-scale invasion.
• Trump also said he would “probably” meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month, but did not elaborate.
• Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy aide, said it was “difficult” to discuss a date for a potential meeting between Trump and Putin.

• Moscow’s economic negotiator, Kirill Dmitriev, said that Western attempts to isolate Russia had “obviously failed”.
• The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, urged the US not to walk into “traps” set by Russia as it attempts to divide the West. “By working together with the US, we can achieve a just and lasting peace – on Ukraine’s terms”, Kallas said.
• Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, claimed he had been assured by the US that it wouldn’t reduce its troop presence along NATO’s eastern flank.

Military aid &amp, defence spending

• EU lawmakers demanded that Europe “double down” on strengthening its defenses and supporting Ukraine. “Europe can no longer fully rely on the United States to defend our shared values and interests, including continued support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”, the European People’s Party, Socialists and Democrats, Renew and Greens said in a statement.
• After the US-Russian talks in Riyadh, French President Emmanuel Macron declared he would hold a meeting on Ukraine. Macron once more made an open letter to the French regional newspapers about sending troops to Ukraine, but he also stressed that this could only be done in the most limited way and away from conflict zones.
• In the event of a peace deal, Trump said he would not oppose Europeans sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine to provide security guarantees.

• According to Germany’s DPA news agency, Latvia will increase its defense spending to 4 percent of GDP next year and 5 percent in the upcoming years. Latvia, which is both an EU and NATO member, lies on NATO’s eastern flank and borders Russia.
• According to the Reuters news agency, European defense stocks have increased as governments are under increasing military spending in the area.

Diplomacy

• According to two people with knowledge of the situation, Zelenskyy has put off a planned trip to Saudi Arabia so that it won’t grant the meeting between US and Russian officials in Riyadh “legitimacy.”
• Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, stated at a joint press conference in Ankara that his country would make a good location for upcoming meetings between Russia, Ukraine, and the US to put an end to the conflict.
• Rustem Umerov, the country’s defense minister, and General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, the country’s commander, met with Turkiye’s Defense Minister Yasar Guler and General Selcuk Bayraktaroglu, the country’s defense minister, and discussed strengthening defense cooperation with Ankara, according to reports from Anadolu.
• Beijing supports all efforts aimed at bringing about peace in Ukraine, according to China’s foreign minister Wang Yi, according to Wang Yi’s statement to the UN Security Council.
• A 59-year-old Ukrainian was deported by Slovak police despite the fact that investigations had revealed that the unnamed man had connections to Ukraine’s intelligence services and was involved in organized crime in Ukraine.

Sanctions

• Due to US sanctions against Russian energy companies and tankers carrying Russian oil that were announced on January 10, Turkiye’s largest oil refiner Tupras, it has stopped buying Russian crude oil.
• It was unclear whether Tupras, one of the biggest importers of Russian crude oil since Moscow’s massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022, would halt imports of refined goods from Russia, according to the Reuters news agency. Russian oil represented 65 percent of Turkiye’s total oil imports in January-November 2024.