Key events
EU agrees new round of sanctions against Russia
And just before Zelenskyy speaks, we are getting reports that EU envoys agreed on the sixteenth package of sanctions against Russia, EU diplomats told Reuters.
Sanctions include a Russian primary aluminium import ban and listing of 73 new shadow fleet vessels.
We will get more detail on this soon from the EU, no doubt.
Jakub Krupa
We are expecting to hear from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy soon.
We will bring you the latest here when he speaks.
Morning opening: Trump confuses Europe, again
Jakub Krupa
You just never know where things are going to go with US president Donald Trump.
When he started talking about Ukraine last night, at first, he appeared to give his approval to the idea of deploying European peacekeeping forces there (“all for” and “fine”) and said he had no plans for pulling out US troops from Europe, despite some suggestions that Russia’s Putin would ask him to do that. So far, so good.
But the longer his statement continued, the worse it became for Ukraine.
Trump eventually said that Zelenskyy “should have never started it, … could have made a deal,” as if it was Ukraine who invaded Russia and not the other way round, and repeated Russian key demands for elections in Ukraine, with unfounded allegations on president Zelenskyy’s poor approval rating.
This will ring alarm bells in Ukraine and across Europe again.
The US president also said last night that he was “much more confident” of a deal after the talks, adding “they were very good,” and that Russia “want to stop the savage barbarism.”
(Whisper it, but they can do it quite easily, being the ones who invaded.)
As Sean Savett, who was the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council under then-president Joe Biden, said more bluntly in a social media post: “Sounds like Trump bought Putin’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker.
On Tuesday, US state secretary Marco Rubio debriefed the Quint – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – and the European Union on the talks, promising they will stay “in close contact as we work to achieve a durable end to the conflict in Ukraine.”
But EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas issued a pointed warning: “Russia will try to divide us. Let’s not walk into their traps.”
One issue that was discussed during last night’s talks was a proposed moratorium on attacks on the energy infrastructure of Russia and Ukraine. It was rejected by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who insisted at his press conference that the Russians would never do that anyway as they only attack legitimate military targets.
You will be shocked – shocked! – to hear that Ukraine reported overnight a Russian attack on energy infrastructure in the southern region of Odesa, leaving at least 160,000 residents without heating and power. It is -7 degrees Celsius there.
More European allies are expected to meet in Paris today after protests over their exclusion from the hand-picked group invited for Monday’s first round of talks. The invitees reportedly include Norway, Canada, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Belgium. We are yet to formally hear about it from the Élysée Palace.
No doubt there will be more consultations taking place behind the scenes, and US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog will be in Kyiv today.
I will bring you the latest.
It’s Wednesday, 19 February 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.
Good morning.
