These are important developments since day 1,458 of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
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Published February 21, 2026
The situation on Saturday, February 21st is as follows.
finding
The death toll from a Russian attack on a warehouse in Malinivka, Ukraine’s Kharkiv region has risen to three after rescue workers found two more bodies under the rubble, the state emergency service announced on the messaging app Telegram. Two police officers were killed in a Russian drone attack while trying to evacuate residents near the village of Seredny Burruk in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s National Police said in a telegram. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense announced Thursday night that the Russian military launched ballistic missiles and 128 drones into Ukraine. The ministry added that the Ukrainian military shot down 107 drones. The Russian attack left dozens of people injured and damaged homes, oil and gas facilities and other infrastructure in Ukraine’s Poltava region, the country’s state oil and gas company Naftogaz said. Russian forces attacked Komisvash in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region with guided bombs, causing a house fire and injuring a 22-year-old woman and a 27-year-old man, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said in a telegram. In Russia, a Ukrainian drone attacked a car in the rural Maksimovskoye settlement on the front lines of the Belgorod region, killing two people and injuring three others, regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote in a telegram. The attack was one of several by Ukrainian forces across Belgorod, including another attack that killed a man in the village of Pochaevo, the Regional Emergency Operations Center wrote on Telegram. Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, said Ukrainian troops had attacked a hospital in the village of Voronok with drones, but no casualties were reported. “Significant parts” of Russian-occupied northwestern Zaporizhzhya remained without power due to a “massive attack” by Ukrainian forces on the region’s power grid, Russia’s Tass news agency reported, citing Russian-appointed official Yevhen Balitsky. Evgeniya Yashina, head of communications at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, told TASS that there had been heavy shelling by Ukrainian forces near the facility, which has been under Russian occupation since 2022.
politics and diplomacy
French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will chair a video conference of Ukraine’s “coalition of allies” on February 24 to mark the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Macron’s office announced on Friday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on a WhatsApp group that there has been no positive progress in U.S.-brokered peace talks with Russia over the future of Russian-occupied land in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that he could not yet confirm when and where new talks on Ukraine would take place, after TASS reported that the next round would be held in Geneva.
energy
The European Commission has confirmed that the German government will grant trusteeship of the German assets of Rosneft, the US-licensed Russian oil group that supplies much of Berlin’s fuel through its PCK Shvet refinery, when the current arrangement expires on March 10.
Serbian Energy Minister Dubravka Jedovic Handanovic said the U.S. Treasury Department has extended sanctions relief for Serbia’s Russian-owned oil company NIS until March 20, giving the Balkan nation an extra month to supply crude oil. Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Hungary would block a 90 billion euro ($106 billion) European Union loan to Ukraine until oil shipments to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline resumed. “By blocking oil shipments to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, Ukraine will violate the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement and break its commitments to the European Union. We will not yield to this threat,” Szijjarto told X.
regional security
Britain and its European allies, including France, Germany, Italy and Poland, will work together to develop new low-cost air defense weapons to protect the continent’s skies, the Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
