Closing summary
There are planned talks between Russia and the US expected to take place in Saudi Arabia in the coming days. US officials said that Ukraine was also invited – although Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his country has received no such invitation. Kyiv is not expected to send a team to the talks.
Zelenskyy said earlier today that 100,000 people were without heating in the southern port city of Mykolaiv in cold temperatures after a Russian drone strike on “critical infrastructure”. “Those who genuinely seek peace and prepare for negotiations do not act this way,” the Ukrainian leader wrote on X.
European leaders, including British prime minister Keir Starmer, are set to gather in Paris tomorrow for an emergency summit on the war in Ukraine. The meeting is expected to discuss US efforts to exclude European leaders from the peace talks, the position Europe should adopt on Ukraine’s future membership of Nato and how Ukraine can be offered security guarantees.
Former UK prime minister John Major condemned JD Vance, the US vice-president, as hypocritical and “not statesmanlike” for lecturing Europe on free speech while also “cuddling” Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The US has reportedly sent a questionnaire to European allies, asking them to provide detailed proposals on the weaponry, peacekeeping troops and security arrangements they could give Kyiv as part of any security guarantees that could be negotiated to bring an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
This blog is closing now. Thanks for following along. You can read all our Ukraine coverage here.
The French presidency has confirmed reports that the British prime minister Keir Starmer, German chancellor Olaf Scolz, Nato chief Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will all be attending the emergency summit in Paris tomorrow.
An aide close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has told NBC News that Ukraine has still not been invited to the talks between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, which are expected to take place in the coming days.
The following is from NBC’s Kirsten Welker:
“It is dangerous to speak with enemies before you speak with allies. Ukraine’s position remains unchanged: We need to have a joint position of Ukraine, the US and Europe before any negotiations with Putin,” this person says.
Two US officials confirm that Ukraine was not invited to the talks but say the intention is for the US to host a bilaterial with Russia, then a bilateral with Ukraine and then talks together.
“All to say, we are working with both [Russia and Ukraine] with the same weight. We want to end the killing and get headed to lasting peace,” says one of the US officials.
US asks European capitals what they need from Washington for Ukraine security guarantees - reports
The US has reportedly sent a questionnaire to European allies, asking them to provide detailed proposals on the weaponry, peacekeeping troops and security arrangements they could give Kyiv as part of any security guarantees that could be negotiated to bring an end to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The document, consisting of six points and questions, asks which countries could contribute to the guarantees, would be willing to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of a peace settlement, and the size of any European-led force.
It also asks what governments would be prepared to do to increase sanctions on Russia, including more strictly enforcing existing ones, according to Reuters.
“What, if any, US support requirements would your government consider necessary for its participation in these security arrangements? Specifically, which short-term and long-term resources do you think will be required from the US?,” one of the questions asked.
“If third Country military forces were to be deployed to Ukraine as part of a peace arrangement, what would you consider to be the necessary size of such a European-led force? How and where would these forces be deployed, and for how long?,” another question asked.
“What additional capabilities, equipment and maintenance sustainment options is your Government prepared to provide to Ukraine to improve its negotiating hand and increase pressure on Russia?”, the questionnaire asked. Two European diplomats told Reuters that there was still a debate on how European capitals would respond, but some believed it should be a collective answer.
Updated
Allies must work together to prevent Russia from making 'threat to Ukrainian life permanent' - Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said earlier today that 100,000 people were without heating in the southern port city of Mykolaiv in cold temperatures after a Russian drone strike on “critical infrastructure”.
In a post on X, Zelenskyy wrote:
An ordinary Ukrainian city. Ordinary civilian infrastructure. It has nothing to do with hostilities or the frontline situation.
This is yet another clear demonstration that Russians are waging war against our people and against life itself in Ukraine. And they are fighting vilely, without easing the pressure.
Those who genuinely seek peace and prepare for negotiations do not act this way.
Zelenskyy added that “all partners” need to work together to prevent Moscow from “dragging out this war or making the threat to life permanent”.
Mykolaiv came under a massive attack last night. A 64-year-old man was injured, while critical infrastructure and at least 5 apartment buildings were damaged. In the Kyiv region, the air raid alert lasted for over 5 hours. The aftermath – at least 6 destroyed private homes. In… pic.twitter.com/EL4yqQPdH2
— Гюндуз Мамедов/Gyunduz Mamedov (@MamedovGyunduz) February 16, 2025
Russian drone’s damaged Mykolaiv thermal power plant so that people were left without heat in sub-zero temperatures, Ukraine’s prime minister Denys Shmyhal wrote on Telegram. Five apartment buildings and several shop and office spaces were damaged as a result of falling drone debris but the fire in Mykolaiv was quickly extinguished, according to officials. There were no immediate reports of any deaths. One person was reported injured.
In the Kyiv capital region, several houses were damaged in a drone strike, the State Emergency Service of Ukraine said on Telegram. There were no injuries, they added.
Updated
Below are some of John Major’s other comments he gave to the BBC:
On the general change in recent weeks:
There’s no doubt in my mind that democracy is threatened. It’s been in modest decline for the last 18 years. There’s an ugly nationalism growing mostly from the intolerant right.
At this particular time the big nations, America, China, Russia, are beginning to act unilaterally, where once they would have consulted. And that is a concern, because it does presage the prospect of very great and rather unpleasant changes.
He called Trump’s administration “a form of presidency I haven’t previously seen” and warned against Trump conceding too much to Russia over Ukraine.
“Consider what happens if Russia can claim a win, China is going to notice that, and so will the world, and so will every tin pot dictator around the world. If America is not to stand behind its allies in the way the world has previously seen, then we are moving into a wholly different and in my view, rather more dangerous world.”
Major added:
I believe now that America, with all her great power and prestige, and all that she has done to keep the world safe in recent years, may now be turning her back on the international responsibilities she has previously taken, and if she does so there is no other nation state that can replace them, other than China.
That is not something I think the west would certainly wish to see. And so if that happens, the world, including America, may regret what subsequently follows.
John Major accuses US of 'cuddling' up to Putin as he condemns JD Vance's Munich speech
Peter Walker is a senior political correspondent for the Guardian
Democracy across the globe is under threat from the retreat of Donald Trump’s America into isolationism, and its likely replacement by Russia or China, John Major has said in notably pointed and outspoken comments.
The former UK prime minister, who rarely offers direct opinion on contemporary politics, used an interview with BBC radio to call Trump’s administration unlikeanything he had seen in the past – and to warn that Washington might live to regret ceding the world stage to a more autocratic power.
He also condemned JD Vance, the US vice-president, as hypocritical and “not statesmanlike” for lecturing Europe on free speech while also “cuddling” Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
On Vance’s speech, Major said:
That is not what we expect from the foremost nation in the free world. It’s certainly not statesmanship, and it potentially gives off very dangerous signals.
It’s extremely odd to lecture Europe on the subject of free speech and democracy at the same time as they’re cuddling Mr. Putin.
In Mr. Putin’s Russia, people who disagree with him disappear or die or flee the country, or, on the statistically unlikely level, fall out of high windows somewhere in Moscow.
Updated
In this analysis piece, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor, Patrick Wintour, writes that the EU “failed to Trump-proof Europe” as many members of the bloc have been reluctant to prioritise defence spending and have been too reliant on US security assistance. Here is an extract from the analysis:
Little that Trump or his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said on Wednesday about their approach to a ceasefire including the US’s refusal to commit further resources to Ukraine could have come as a shock. Indeed Europe largely has only itself to blame.
Since the Nato meeting in Newport, Wales, in 2014 that set the target of defence spending reaching 2% of GDP, Europe collectively has had numerous wake-up calls, commissioned strategic reviews, studies of collective defence capability, and generalised warnings from across the Atlantic. Hardly a year went by without the French president, Emmanuel Macron, or the Nato secretary general reaching ever deeper into the lexicon of doom about the alliance’s brain dead status.
After the shock of Trump’s first term, and the dawning realisation that he might return, the EU bureaucracy spoke of the need to Trump-proof Europe – yet with the steam train coming down the track the EU bureaucracy settled for one more strategic discussion and never reacted with the speed and decisiveness required. There was a collective failure of imagination.
As Europe now faces the challenge of being able to put a peacekeeping force into the field, the former MI6 chief Alex Younger admits Europe simply does not have the capabilities to operate without the US.
The German chancellor Olaf Scholz will attend the summit between European leaders in Paris on Monday, German government sources have told the Reuters news agency. The Polish prime minister Donald Tusk will also attend, a member of Poland’s upper house of parliament said.
Poland hopes the meeting will see what immediate help can be given to Ukraine and whether Europe can play a concrete role in providing security guarantees for Kyiv as well as considering how to strengthen Europe’s collective security.
France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot has warned against “over-dramatising” the meeting between European leaders in Paris on Monday.
France is due to host the summit of European leaders to discuss the Ukraine war and European security as the continent scrambles to respond to US president Donald Trump’s unilateral approach to the conflict.
Barrot told France Inter radio that meetings of this nature should not be over dramatised as they happen regularly, the Reuters news agency reports.
France’s foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, has confirmed reports to France Inter radio that European leaders will meet tomorrow (in Paris) for an emergency summit on the war in Ukraine (see post at 09.35 for more details about what the summit will cover).
Five European diplomats said the meeting would include France, Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, Spain and Denmark, which would represent Baltic and Scandinavian countries. Nato secretary general Mark Rutte is also reportedly going to be at the crisis talks, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron after a shock phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin last week in which they agreed to start talks to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Updated
Poland’s foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, has said the US has shared their plans for Ukraine with him. He said America’s negotiating tactics give him “hope” even though they are “unorthodox”.
“General Kellogg (the US envoy to Russia and Ukraine) has presented to me personally and to the circle of European allies, the United States’ negotiating tactics,” he told reporters.
“I will not reveal them here. They raise some hopes. They are unorthodox, but we wish them luck.”
Europe needs special Ukraine envoy to get meaningful peace role, European leaders say
Today is the final day of the annual Munich Security Conference (MSC), which will be remembered for Friday’s speech by JD Vance, the US vice-president, in which he accused European leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs.
It came at the end of a week which left European leaders feeling sidelined from negotiations about the war in Ukraine and under even more pressure than before to increase domestic defence spending as the Trump administration made it clear (as if it hadn’t before) that Europe will have to provide “the overwhelming share” of future military aid to Kyiv.
Two European leaders said earlier today that Europe needs a special envoy for Ukraine to ensure it gets a meaningful role in any peace process. It came after Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg said Europe will not have a seat at the table for the talks.
“If I may just throw out one idea loosely, if there is a negotiating table, I think we need to do something similar that was done in Kosovo,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said at the MSC, referring to diplomacy that helped end Serbia’s 1998-99 military crackdown on its restive southern province and bring about Kosovan statehood.
“Europe needs to have a special envoy like Martti Ahtisaari (on Kosovo), and then a deputy envoy who is on the level of … Kellogg …, and in that sense, we get some kind of a skin in the game.”
“What we lacked on Ukraine in recent years was one personality highly respected by everyone, taken into account in Moscow, taken into account in Kyiv, and having support in Washington and European capitals and other leaders, including the global South, that could have the authority to manage the peace talks,” Croatian prime minister Andrej Plenkovic said. “We need the high visibility of someone strong, who can manage the process.”
We are expecting to hear from US secretary of state Marco Rubio later this morning, who is in Jerusalem ahead of talks about the war in Ukraine with Russia in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.
Yesterday, Rubio spoke with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, as a follow-up to Trump’s phone call with Putin on Wednesday.
“The secretary re-affirmed President Trump’s commitment to finding an end to the conflict in Ukraine,” state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. “In addition, they discussed the opportunity to potentially work together on a number of other bilateral issues.”
Rubio will meet with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday before traveling to the UAE and Saudi Arabia (both countries have rejected Donald Trump’s proposal for the effective ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Gaza).
Updated
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the significance of the phone call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump last week was that now Russia and the US would speak about peace and not war.
The two leaders spoke for more than an hour on Wednesday and Trump later said that it was not practical for Ukraine to have Nato membership, something Kyiv has been seeking as a guarantee of its future security. In their call, Trump and Putin reportedly agreed that negotiations to end the war will start “immediately”.
When asked about the phone call, Peskov told state TV Kremlin reporter Pavel Zarubin: “This is a powerful signal that we will now try to solve problems through dialogue.” “Now we will talk about peace, not war,” he said in a clip of the interview released earlier today.
Peskov added that western sanctions – imposed on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – would not prevent talks as they could be “lifted as quickly as imposed”.
Updated
What can we expect from the European crisis summit on Trump’s Ukraine plan next week?
Just as a reminder, European leaders, including British prime minister Keir Starmer, are set to gather next week in Paris for an emergency summit on the war in Ukraine. Here is some of what we can expect from the meeting of European leaders, as reported by my colleagues Patrick Wintour and Toby Helm in this story:
The meeting, likely to be held on Monday, is expected to discuss US efforts to exclude European leaders from the peace talks, the position Europe should adopt on Ukraine’s future membership of Nato and how Ukraine can be offered security guarantees, either through Nato or some European force.
Downing Street confirmed on Saturday it had heard about the proposed meeting and officials made clear that Starmer would attend and take messages from the meeting to Washington this week, when he will meet President Trump.
UK sources said they believed those invited to Paris by Emmanuel Macron would be the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, and the leaders of Germany, Italy, the UK and Poland.
In the UK, the business and trade secretary Jonathan Reynolds has been questioned by Sky News’ Trevor Phillips about the US’s approach to Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Phillips asked Reynolds about the differing statements given by London and Washington about Ukraine’s Nato membership. Keir Starmer has repeatedly said the UK will continue to back Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to joining the military alliance despite Washington appearing to rule out membership.
Reynolds disagrees that the UK and US have divergent views about Ukraine’s Nato membership. He said all parties want the war in Ukraine to end and stressed that Kyiv has to be part of negotiations in order to ensure a “durable peace”.
Reynolds said the US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, said that “everything is still on the table”. This is despite Hegseth ruling out Nato membership for Ukraine and the restoration of Crimea and other territories occupied by Moscow since 2014, in effect conceding to some of Russia’s demands even before negotiations began.
“There is a role the UK can play which is in that bridge between European allies and our US allies. We can be that bridge that strengthens that relationship.” Reynolds added.
Nato – which has 32 members across Europe and North America – operates by consensus, meaning that the objection of a single country is enough to block a new country from joining. Reynolds played down divisions within the alliance, saying it is too early for such pessimism.
'Most people recognise the pressure the world is under'
— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 16, 2025
Speaking to @TrevorPTweets the Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds says he recognises 'more will have to be spent on defence'. https://t.co/PAiZ4D1jU3
📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube pic.twitter.com/65V19mObip
He said that most Europeans recognise Trump’s mandate from the presidential election in November and that there is agreement that defence spending by Nato members should increase to share some of the “burden” of collective defence as the US shifts its geo-political priorities.
Labour has pledged to raise defence spending from 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP, half of what Donald Trump has called on Nato nations to spend on defence. Reynolds said he recognises that “more” will have to be spent on defence, without committing to any figures. He was speaking as the UK finalises a strategic defence review, which the government says will be released in the first half of the year.
Updated
Trump team to start Russia-Ukraine talks in Saudi Arabia
As we mentioned in the opening summary, there are reports that senior Trump officials are heading to Saudi Arabia next week to begin so-called peace talks with Russian and Ukrainian negotiators.
US national security adviser Mike Waltz, secretary of state Marco Rubio and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Saudi Arabia, according to Politico.
Michael McCaul, chair of the US house foreign affairs committee, said the talks were aimed at arranging a meeting with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy “to finally bring peace and end this conflict”.
US officials said that Ukraine was also invited – although Zelenskyy says his country has received no such invitation, underlining concerns about US efforts to exclude Ukraine and European leaders from the talks.
According to Politico, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine-Russia talks, retired Gen Keith Kellogg, will not be in attendance. There are no plans to send a delegation from Kyiv to the talks, as the news of the meeting in Saudi Arabia reportedly came as a surprise to Ukrainian officials.
Updated
Opening summary
The Munich security conference concludes today after a dramatic two days during which the US vice-president, JD Vance, excoriated European leaders, accusing them of suppressing free speech, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, declared it was time to create a European army.
With Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine looming over the conference, the two men met at its sidelines, with Zelenskyy demanding “security guarantees” and a joint US-Ukrainian peace plan before he enters into any talks with Moscow.
But what may have loomed even larger is the phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin earlier in the week, during which the US and Russian leaders agreed to begin talks on a ceasefire – sparking fears that Ukraine and Europe would be cut out of any negotiations.
With European leaders scrambling to mount a united front on Saturday, Marco Rubio spoke on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, and there are reports the US’s top diplomat will lead a delegation to Saudi Arabia next week to meet Russian officials and start talks on ending the war.
In other developments:
Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said Europe will be consulted – but ultimately excluded – from the talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US. “To my European friends, I would say: ‘Get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defence] spending’,” Kellogg said at the Munich conference on Saturday.
Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, said “Europe needs to talk less and do more”, in response to the prospect of being shut out of talks. “There’s no way in which we can have discussions or negotiations about Ukraine, Ukraine’s future or European security structure, without Europeans,” Stubb told reporters in Munich. “But this means that Europe needs to get its act together.”
The Nato chief, Mark Rutte, said Europe had to come up with “good proposals” for securing peace in Ukraine if it wanted to be involved in US-led talks. “If Europeans want to have a say, make yourself relevant,” Rutte told journalists.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, and Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, have discussed Kyiv’s vision of a path to peace with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi. Sybiha said on X the meeting that took place on the sidelines of the Munich conference was to “reaffirm mutual respect for territorial integrity”. On Friday, Wang told the conference that China believes all stakeholders in the war in Ukraine should participate in the peace talks, underscoring Europe’s role in them.
