Here is the situation on Tuesday, February 11:

Fighting

• A woman was injured and five houses damaged in an overnight Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s northeastern city of Sumy, regional official Ihor Kalchenko said. A separate attack on a non-residential building in Kyiv also sparked a fire, the capital’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defence units intercepted and destroyed 15 Ukrainian drones overnight. Seven were downed over Russia’s southern Krasnodar region, while the rest were destroyed in the country’s southern and western regions, the ministry said.
• The Ukrainian military said it shot down 61 out of 83 drones launched by Russia overnight, while just more than 20 of the unmanned aerial vehicles failed to reach their targets, the military added.

Russian Gas & Oil

• Moldova’s Prime Minister Dorin Rocean said the country’s pro-Russian breakaway enclave, Transnistria, has rejected the European Union’s 60 million euro ($61.8m) offer to fund gas purchases. Rocean said, “Russia does not allow them to accept European aid for fear of losing control over the region.”

• Transnistria’s leader, Vadim Krasnoselsky, said a Hungarian company was arranging to supply gas to the separatist enclave with “Russian credit and functional support”. Recean said gas would start flowing under this arrangement as early as February 13.

Politics & Diplomacy

• Russian state news agency RIA quoted the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin as saying that Moscow had not received any satisfactory proposals to start a ceasefire conversation with Ukraine.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping accepted Russia’s invitation to attend commemorations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, Moscow’s state news agency TASS reported. May 9 marks the 80th anniversary of the victory.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to attend the Munich Security Conference, where Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine will be high on the agenda. Senior representatives from United States President Donald Trump’s administration will also attend the conference, which starts on Friday and where talks are expected to take place on the sidelines.
• News website Semafor cited three unnamed Western officials as saying that Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, had told allies that he was preparing options to end the war in Ukraine. Kellogg is scheduled to visit Ukraine on February 20, the AFP news agency reports, citing a source in the White House.

• In a video released by Ukrainian media, Zelenskyy said that “serious people” from the Trump administration would be visiting Ukraine ahead of the Munich Security Conference. Zelenskyy also plans to have a meeting with US Vice President JD Vance at the security conference, the AFP reports.
• Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said there was no agreement between Moscow and Washington on high-level contacts between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Ryabkov also said it would be impossible to reach an agreement on ending the war if root causes in Ukraine were not addressed, and the Kremlin was ready for dialogue “on an equal basis”.
• Ryabkov also said all demands put forth by Putin in June to end the conflict with Ukraine must be met before any settlement is possible. These conditions include Ukraine dropping its NATO ambitions and withdrawing troops from four Ukrainian regions claimed by Russia.
• The US decision to freeze foreign aid has begun threatening six investigations by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into Russia’s alleged war crimes, the Reuters news agency reports, citing eight sources and a Ukrainian document. The war crimes probes are reportedly valued at $89m, with funds for at least five of the projects frozen.
• Alice Jill Edwards, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, has called on Moscow to provide immediate and comprehensive medical care to at least eight Ukrainian civilians held in Russia, who are originally from Crimea. “Urgent action is needed to protect their lives,” she said.

Source

:

Al Jazeera and news agencies