Ukraine expressed frustration with its ongoing peace talks with Russia and the United States this week, saying US pressure was too one-sided against it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs of today, we cannot say that the outcome is sufficient,\u201d Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in a Wednesday evening video address.<\/p>\n
Before Wednesday\u2019s talks in Geneva had begun, Zelenskyy told Axios news service that ceding the remaining one-fifth of the eastern Donetsk region that Russia doesn\u2019t control, as Moscow has demanded, would not be accepted by Ukrainians.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmotionally, people will never forgive this. Never. They will not forgive \u2026 me, they will not forgive [the US],\u201d Zelenskyy said, adding that Ukrainians \u201ccan\u2019t understand why\u201d they would be asked to give up additional land.<\/p>\n
Russia currently controls about 19 percent of Ukraine, down from 26 percent in March 2022.<\/p>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE-WHO](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/INTERACTIVE-WHO-CONTROLS-WHAT-IN-UKRAINE-1771420401.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\n
Last month, 54 percent of surveyed Ukrainians told the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology they categorically reject transferring the whole of the Donetsk region to Russian control, even in return for strong security guarantees, with only 39 percent accepting the proposal.<\/p>\n
Two-thirds of respondents also said they did not believe the current US-sponsored peace negotiations would lead to lasting peace.<\/p>\n
Instead of ceding land now, Zelenskyy favours freezing the current line of contact as a pretext for a ceasefire and territorial negotiations.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that if we will put in the document \u2026 that we stay where we stay on the contact line, I think that people will support this [in a] referendum. That is my opinion,\u201d he told Axios.<\/p>\n
Blaming Ukraine<\/h2>\n
US President Donald Trump told Reuters last month that Ukraine, not Russia, was holding up a peace deal.<\/p>\n
But Zelenskyy said it was \u201cnot fair\u201d that Trump was putting public pressure on Ukraine to accept Russian terms, adding, \u201cI hope it is just his tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n
US senators visiting Odesa last week agreed with him, saying they want their government to put more pressure on Russia.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody, literally nobody, believes that Russia is acting in good faith in the negotiations with our government and with the Ukrainians. And so pressure becomes the key,\u201d said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
Russia unleashed a barrage of 396 attack drones and 29 missiles on Ukraine\u2019s energy infrastructure on the day of the Geneva talks, its second large-scale blow in six days. On February 12, another attack had left 100,000 families without electricity, and 3,500 apartment buildings without heat in Kyiv alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia greets with a strike even the very day new formats begin in Geneva \u2013 trilateral and bilateral with the United States,\u201d said Zelenskyy in a video address. \u201cThis very clearly shows what Russia wants and what it is truly intent on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy has repeatedly asked Western allies to stop Russian energy sales that circumvent sanctions, and to stop exporting components to third countries, which re-export them to Russia\u2019s armaments industry.<\/p>\n
Russia is believed to be using a shadow fleet estimated at between 400 and 1,000 oil tankers to carry and sell its crude oil. France has seized two of those tankers, and the US seized a second tanker on Monday.<\/p>\n
The US Senate has held off voting on a sanctions bill that has 85 percent support because of opposition from Trump. The bill would impose secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil \u2013 notably India and China.<\/p>\n Russia has fought since 2014 to seize the two eastern regions of Ukraine, which triggered its invasion \u2013 Luhansk and Donetsk \u2013 where it claimed a Russian-speaking population was being persecuted by the government in Kyiv.<\/p>\n Late last year, Russia managed to seize all of Luhansk, but analysts believe it is doubtful that it could take the remainder of Donetsk without serious losses, because Ukraine has heavily fortified a series of cities in the western part of the region.<\/p>\n That task has now become even harder, according to observers, since Russia this month lost access to Starlink terminals, which helped it communicate, fly its drones and coordinate accurate counter-battery fire.<\/p>\n As Russian ground assaults have faltered, Ukraine has seized the initiative to make gains in Dnipropetrovsk, said Ukrainian military observer Konstantyn Mashovets.<\/p>\n Ukrainian forces gained 201sq km of territory from Russian occupation forces between February 11 and 15, according to observers, reportedly their fastest advance since a 2023 counteroffensive.<\/p>\n Russia has been trying to replace Starlink using stratospheric balloons, reported Ukrainian Defence Ministry adviser Serhiy \u201cFlash\u201d Beskrestnov.<\/p>\n Russia would likely take six months to replace Starlink, said a Ukrainian unmanned systems commander, offering Ukrainian forces a window to roll back Russian advances.<\/p>\n It also suffered 31,680 casualties in January, estimated Ukraine\u2019s General Staff \u2013 a sustainable number given Russian recruitment levels of about 40,000 a month. But those numbers would rise in the event of a major assault on the remainder of Donetsk, experts say.<\/p>\n \u201cOur goal is to have at least 50,000 confirmed enemy losses every month,\u201d said Ukrainian Minister of Defence Mykhailo Fedorov on February 12, echoing a goal set by Zelenskyy last month.<\/p>\n Fedorov has set out to increase the production of remote-control FPV drones used on the front lines, which Ukraine says are now responsible for 60 percent of all Russian casualties.<\/p>\n As part of that effort, joint drone production facilities are planned in several European countries. The first started operating on February 13 in Germany, Zelenskyy told the Munich Security Conference, and nine more are planned.<\/p>\n In addition, Ukraine\u2019s European allies pledged 38 billion euros ($44.7bn) in military aid this year during a Ramstein format meeting \u2013 the alliance of more than 50 countries which plans military aid for Ukraine \u2013 including 2.5 billion euros ($2.9bn) for Ukrainian drones \u2013 \u201cone of the most successful \u2018Ramsteins\u2019,\u201d Fedorov said.<\/p>\n The European Union has additionally voted to borrow 90 billion euros ($106bn) to give to Ukraine in financial aid this year and next.<\/p>\n The US stopped being a donor of military and financial aid to Ukraine after Trump was sworn in as president in January 2025.<\/p>\n Against Trump\u2019s wishes, the US Senate voted to spend $400m in each of the next two years as part of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which pays US companies for weapons for Ukraine\u2019s military. Europeans have pledged to spend at least 5 billion euros ($5.8bn) on US weapons this year.<\/p>\n Europe would also be the main contributor to a \u201creassurance force\u201d policing the line of contact after a ceasefire, and on Ukraine\u2019s insistence, US representatives also met with British, French, German, Italian and Swiss representatives before the talks in Geneva.<\/p>\n Ukraine expressed frustration with its ongoing peace talks with Russia and the United States this week, saying US pressure was too one-sided against it. \u201cAs of today, we cannot say that the outcome is sufficient,\u201d Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in a Wednesday evening video address. Before Wednesday\u2019s talks in Geneva had begun, Zelenskyy told Axios news […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12910,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12909\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kyiv\"](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/2026-02-04T161019Z_438674695_RC2ZEJAPPF6O_RTRMADP_3_UKRAINE-CRISIS-ENERGY-PLANT-1771591749.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
Can Russia take Donetsk anyway?<\/h2>\n
![\"INTERACTIVE-WHO](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/INTERACTIVE-WHO-CONTROLS-WHAT-IN-EASTERN-UKRAINE-copy-1771420406.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\n![\"INTERACTIVE-WHO](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/INTERACTIVE-WHO-CONTROLS-WHAT-IN-SOUTHERN-UKRAINE-1771420404.png?quality=80\")
<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"