Ukraine war briefing: Power restrictions as Russia hits energy system
Trump says Ukraine ‘may be Russian someday’; Biden-approved weapons still flowing, says Kellogg. What we know on day 1,084
Ukraine implemented emergency power restrictions on Tuesday morning as the energy minister, German Galushchenko, said a Russian attack on gas infrastucture was under way.
A Ukrainian drone attack damaged an industrial facility in Russia’s southern region of Saratov, its governor said early on Tuesday. Ukraine’s Lt Col Andriy Kovalenko said it was the Saratov oil refinery that supplies the Russian army with fuel, but did not directly say it was the result of a Ukrainian attack. The Russian aviation watchdog Rosaviatsia said it was suspending flights at the regional airport as well as those in Kazan, Ulyanovsk and Kirov.
Donald Trump on Monday left open the possibility that Ukraine “may be Russian someday”, and called for trading US aid for Kyiv’s natural resources, such as rare minerals. “They may make a deal, they may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “But we are going to have all this money in there and I say I want it back.”
Weapons approved under Joe Biden’s presidency are still flowing to Ukraine, the new US special envoy to Kyiv, Keith Kellogg, said on Monday. “There’s not necessarily any need in the next 24 hours to [do] it any different,” Kellogg said in an interview with the Reuters news agency.
The Trump administration plans to push European allies to buy more American weapons for Ukraine – as they did under the Biden administration – ahead of potential peace talks with Moscow, Reuters has reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter. Kellogg will discuss this with European allies this week during the Munich security conference, which begins on Friday, Reuters said, citing its sources. The development, if confirmed, may be reassuring to Ukrainian leaders that the flow of arms will continue.
Kellogg declined to confirm the plan to Reuters but said: “The US always likes selling weapons made in America because it strengthens our economy. There are a lot of options out there. Everything is in play right now.” It is believed that administration officials view an arms purchase deal with Europe as a potential workaround, allowing Washington to support Kyiv without spending US taxpayer dollars. The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said Europe would pay for US arms for Ukraine.
On the potential for peace talks, Kellogg told Reuters: “I wouldn’t say we’re at the beginning of the [peace planning process] because we’ve been thinking through it,” adding that US officials in Munich would “deliver our expectations to the allies … More importantly, we want to hear from them”.
Donald Trump on Monday confirmed that Kellogg would soon visit Ukraine. A source in the Ukrainian president’s office told Agence France-Presse that Kellogg would arrive in Ukraine on 20 February. Zelenskyy spokesperson Sergiy Nikiforov told AFP that Ukraine’s president would meet with the US vice-president, JD Vance, on Friday on the sidelines of the Munich conference.
The pro-Russian separatist region of Moldova, Transnistria, rejected on Monday a new European gas offer despite experiencing a severe energy crisis since Gazprom deliveries via Ukraine stopped. Separatist leadership said the region would instead take Russia-financed gas transported from Hungary, which receives gas from Russia via the Turkstream pipeline through Turkey. Moldova has criticised the whole affair as a destabilisation tactic by Russia. “The European Union’s offer was a solution to free the territory from blackmail and energy instability” but “Russia won’t allow it to accept European aid because it is scared of losing control” of the territory, said the Moldovan prime minister, Dorin Recean.
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