Here are the latest updates as of Wednesday, February 12:
Fighting
Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, came under Russian missile attack early on Thursday, with witnesses reporting sounds of explosions, the Ukrainian military said. There were no immediate reports of casualties, and the extent of the damage from the attack was not immediately known.
Russian strikes killed four people and injured three in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the head of the regional military administration, Oleksandr Handza, said on the Telegram messaging app.
Those killed in the Synelnykove district included an elderly couple and their 45-year-old son, Handza added.
A woman was killed after a Russian drone struck an ambulance carrying five people, including medical staff and civilians, according to a statement from Ukraine’s Kharkiv regional police on Telegram.
Ukrainian forces shot down two Russian “Kinzhal” ballistic missiles heading towards the western Ukrainian city of Lviv, the city’s mayor, Andriy Sadovyi, said. Sadovyi said there was no information on casualties or damage.
Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Volgograd region late on Wednesday, sparking a fire, the Ukrainian military said in a Facebook post.
Ukrainian forces are in control of the town of Zaliznychne, despite Russian claims that it had been captured, a southern military spokesperson, Vladyslav Voloshyn, told Ukrinform.
A Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Belgorod region killed one civilian and injured at least seven, local officials said, according to Russia’s TASS news agency.
The attack also damaged water supply infrastructure in several villages in the region’s Borisovsky and Rakityansky districts, leaving them without water, the Belgorod region water utility said on Telegram. The Belgorod region is located near the Russia-Ukraine border.
An employee of Russia’s Miratorg agricultural holding was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack, Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, said, according to TASS.
Ukrainian forces struck the occupied Kherson region of Ukraine, killing a woman and injuring five people, Vladimir Saldo, a Russian-installed official there, said on Telegram.
Regional Security
Russia will abide by the terms of the recently expired New START treaty limiting the number of its nuclear weapons as long as Washington continues to abide by them, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in parliament.
The EU will work to improve drone detection capabilities in Europe and proposes to expand registration requirements for such equipment, the bloc said in a new action plan.
US defense contractor Northrop Grumman and Polish arms group Niewiadow-PGM plan to produce over 180,000 artillery shells annually in Poland, the US company’s country manager in Poland, Quinn Canoll, said. The 155mm shells have been widely used in Ukraine’s war with Russia but have been in short supply, and Canoll did not rule out the possibility of selling them to Ukraine.
The Chinese captain of a Hong Kong-registered cargo ship has pleaded not guilty in a Hong Kong court to a charge of criminal damage over allegations that it damaged an undersea cable in the Baltic Sea, a region on high alert during Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Military Aid
The UK has pledged £150 million ($205 million) to the Priority Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) program to provide US weapons to Ukraine, UK Defense Secretary John Healey said on Wednesday.
Politics & Diplomacy
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron, who briefed him on a recent visit to Moscow by a French presidential aide.
President Zelenskyy denied a Financial Times report that he plans to announce a presidential election and a referendum on a proposed peace deal with Russia on February 24.
Zelenskyy told Bloomberg News he has accepted Washington’s proposal to host the next round of peace talks in the US.
Poland and Italy said they would not join President Trump’s peace commission, expanding the list of Ukraine’s allies refusing to join the commission, which has already sent invitations to Russia and its ally Belarus.
“Given some doubts about the composition of the commission in the country, Poland will not join the work of the peace commission in this case, but we will analyze it,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said during a government meeting.
Italy “cannot join the peace commission because there are insurmountable constitutional obstacles on the Italian side,” Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said. According to the Italian constitution, the country can only join international organizations on an equal footing with other nations — a condition Rome says the commission’s current charter, which grants Trump broad executive powers, does not meet.
Aid
The Swiss government has approved up to 32 million Swiss francs ($41.8 million) in emergency energy aid for Ukraine, it said in a statement.
Zelenskyy welcomed a European Parliament decision to provide Ukraine with a €900 million ($1.06 billion) aid loan, saying it is “exactly the kind of signal that should be sent to the aggressor (Russia).”