24tv.ua reports a new drone attack from Russia, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense reports. Warnings of flying missiles from areas in Eastern Ukraine, as well as from the regions of Odessa and Nikolaev.
There is currently no information about any damage, but the alert has not been canceled and a missile attack is possible, Whitewash wrote.
Russia has no intention of giving up its claims to Donbas, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview quoted by UNIAN.
They do not want to change their position and insist that Ukraine must hand over the entire Donbas region to them. But if we do this, if we give them a finger, they will bite our hand off, Zelensky emphasizes.
According to him, giving up territory in exchange for peace will only be a temporary solution, despite signals from the trilateral negotiations that there is progress in reaching a peace agreement.
Meanwhile, Zelensky's chief of staff, Kirill Budanov, said that neither Ukraine nor Russia wants to lose the mediation of the United States in the process. America has all the tools to find a common position between Kiev and Moscow, Budanov emphasized.
Whether this will be achieved will become clear at the next round of negotiations, which is scheduled to take place on February 27.
Russia wants to reach the administrative borders of the Donetsk region in early April. This was stated today by the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Brigadier General Pavlo Palitsa, in an interview with the My-Ukraine TV channel.
''The enemy's plans are obvious, he sets himself the goal of reaching the administrative borders of the Donetsk region by the end of March - the beginning of April, and also to advance as much as possible in the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions“, he noted.
The Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration believes that Russia has not given up on its intentions to create a buffer zone along the border in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions.
''If it succeeds, by the end of the year the enemy will try to develop an offensive to capture or create conditions for the capture of Zaporizhia, Kherson, Nikolaev and later Odessa“, Palitsa is categorical.
At the same time, the general emphasizes that at the moment he does not see opportunity for the Kremlin to implement these plans in the next six months.
The possible transfer of nuclear weapons to Kiev is the most serious threat to Russia since the Great Patriotic War, said Russian military expert Andrei Marochko, quoted by TASS.
Earlier, the press office of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service reported that Paris and London were actively working to provide Kiev with nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. The option under consideration is the French small-sized TN75 warhead from the M51.1 submarine-launched ballistic missile.
''This is a truly serious threat, the likes of which have not been seen since the Great Patriotic War. It could be worse than any Cuban missile crisis, because we are currently witnessing a real confrontation and the clock ticking towards a nuclear apocalypse is naturally approaching this number. I think common sense will prevail over the madness that is currently being fueled by short-sighted, reckless Western politicians, Marochko believes.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin boasts about Russia's military successes, four years after the invasion of Ukraine, his troops have suffered perhaps the heaviest casualties any major military power has suffered in a conflict since World War II, writes The New York Times.
The newspaper notes that there are no signs that the conflict is becoming less deadly, as Ukraine seeks to use new combat technologies to increase Russian losses.
The article notes that the expected number of casualties for the entire war among Russian and Ukrainian soldiers could exceed half a million by 2026.
The exact number of people killed in the war soldiers remains a closely guarded secret for both sides, as Moscow and Kiev seek to avoid showing weakness, the publication notes.
Some estimates show that Ukraine has lost more soldiers as a percentage of its population in the war than Russia.
Unofficial data shows that the number of Russian servicemen killed is five times higher than the losses suffered by the US armed forces during the Vietnam War.
The publication reports that journalists from the independent Russian news agency ''Mediazona' published on Tuesday, February 24, new results of their study, which has been ongoing since the first months of the invasion, on the number of Russian soldiers killed.
According to their data, up to 200,186 deaths of Russian soldiers have been confirmed so far. However, journalists emphasize that this figure 'represents a conservative minimum, not a maximum'.
They have identified almost 27,000 Russian cities, villages and towns that have sent troops to Ukraine. According to the study, all the manpower from these areas that was sent to Ukrainian territory was irretrievably lost.
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies previously announced that Russia has lost nearly 325,000 people on the battlefield.
The NYT emphasizes that this figure seems reasonable, given the confirmed data from ''Mediazona'' which do not reflect the full losses on the battlefields in 2025 and 2026.
''No great power has suffered such significant losses since World War II“, also believes the lead author of the C.S.I.S. study, Seth Jones.
He adds that the only exception may be China's losses during the Korean War, although estimates for that conflict vary significantly.
Russia is using Ukrainian children as a tool of war through forced deportations and constant attacks. This was stated by the United Nations Secretary of State for Europe, North America and Overseas Territories of Great Britain, Stephen Doughty, Ukrinform reports.
He said that he had met with children who were forcibly taken by Russian troops from their homelands in Ukraine. The children have been separated from their families and given new identities, he added. Since the war began, children in Ukraine have endured a total of 4,000 hours of airstrikes.
The constant power outages, fear and loss of loved ones and relatives are causing serious damage to their mental health, Doughty stressed.
The return of abducted Ukrainian children must be a mandatory part of a peace agreement and the United Kingdom supports these efforts, the diplomat said.
A huge number of missiles and combat drones have been fired by Russia into Ukraine since the war began in 2022. 13,000 missiles of various types, as well as 88,000 drones, were recorded by the Ukrainian defense, said the head of the communications department of the Ukrainian Air Force Yuri Ignat, quoted by UNIAN.
More than 120,000 were heavy bombs dropped on the country. A large part of modern ballistic missiles can be destroyed by the Patriot air defense system, Ignat said. Ukrainian specialists have shot down 86 of the supersonic Russian "Dagger" missiles, over 700 "Kalibur" cruise missiles, 2,500 Kh-101 missiles and their analogues, as well as 260 "Iskander" missiles.
However, a few days ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview that a large part of the country's territory is not protected by air defense, and there are no ammunition for some of the delivered Patriot systems, UNIAN adds.
Russian spies have turned a large amount of real estate in Europe into "Trojan horses" designed to organize coordinated sabotage, The Telegraph writes.
According to the publication, real estate around strategic military or civilian sites is being sought and purchased with particular interest.
Russian citizens are using loopholes in the regulatory framework to acquire real estate in at least a dozen European countries, the publication notes. In order to develop hybrid warfare, agents have bought up houses, apartments, warehouses, abandoned schools and even entire islands.
According to The Telegraph, the plans are to use them as positions for coordinated surveillance, sabotage and secret attacks. European intelligence agencies suspect that these sites may already contain weapons, explosives and drones.
The agents can be activated in the event of a crisis situation for Moscow, the publication notes.