Zelenskyy says ‘real opportunities to end war with dignity still exist’ - Europe live

… and on that note, it’s a wrap for today!

• The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has insisted that “real opportunities to end the war with dignity still exist,” as he called for another round of talks with Russia and the US, and moving some issues to the leaders’ level (15:39).

• His comments come just days before the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, with some EU leaders expected to visit Kyiv (12:11), and others joining online for a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing (15:26).

• The EU is also racing to adopt the latest, 20th, package of sanctions against Russia before the anniversary (12:47), after EU ambassadors failed to reach an agreement today (11:58).

• Meanwhile, Kyiv said Friday that 10 people were arrested in Ukraine and Moldova on suspicion of planning to assassinate senior Ukrainian political figures on Moscow’s orders, with payouts of up to $100,000 (10:43).

Ahead of the anniversary, the Guardian’s Shaun Walker prepared a detailed account, largely reported for the first time, of how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them.

Make sure to read it over the weekend:

In other news,

• German defence minister Boris Pistorius suggested the E5 group could establish a European version of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (12:53).

• German chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Germany must assert itself and take on greater responsibility as a new world order rapidly takes shape (13:35).

• The European Commission has dismissed criticism of its participation in Donald Trump’s Board of Peace event in Washington DC, rejecting suggestions that it had no mandate for attending (12:25).

The European Commission’s chief deputy spokesperson Olof Gill has now responded to the US ruling on behalf of the bloc, saying:

“We take note of the ruling by the U.S. supreme court and are analysing it carefully.

We remain in close contact with the U.S. administration as we seek clarity on the steps they intend to take in response to this ruling.

Businesses on both sides of the Atlantic depend on stability and predictability in the trading relationship.

We therefore continue to advocate for low tariffs and to work towards reducing them.”

The EU has repeatedly been threatened with punitive tariffs by the US administration, including, most recently, over the status of Greenland.

Meanwhile, the US supreme court has issued a sharp rebuke against the Trump administration and ruled against the legality of the president’s sweeping global tariffs.

It is a primarily US news story, but will no doubt be closely followed by many across Europe amid Trump’s semi-regular threats of punitive tariffs against the EU.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has just posted a big update after he had a chance to get a debrief on this week’s peace talks with Russia and the US in Geneva.

He said “real opportunities to end the war with dignity still exist,” and called for another round of talks to be held “very soon, as early as this February”.

Zelenskyy said “Ukraine’s responses to the most difficult questions ahead of the next meeting are ready,” and they still want to raise some issues at the leaders’ level with Trump and Putin.

“It is the leaders’ format that could prove decisive in many respects, and Ukraine is ready for such a format,” he said.

He also pointedly thanked his team for showing patience in all conversations with Russians, saying they “have not always been easy or reasonable”.

The Ukrainian president also said that “Europe is actively engaged in the process of ending the war,” and it’s role “must grow”.

We spent a big part of yesterday looking at Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which continues to cause controversies in Europe (12:25).

What it is, what it is trying to secure, and will it really help Gaza?

Here’s a short video explainer:

We are just getting a line from the Élysée Palace, via Reuters, that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will preside over a video conference meeting of the Coalition of the Willing on 24 February, the fourth anniversary of the Russian full-scale aggression on Ukraine.

UK’s prime minister Keir Starmer will be the co-host.

France and Germany’s plan to build a fighter jet of the future, planned to come with a swarm of drones and a “combat communications cloud”, is collapsing.

Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, said this week that the €100bn programme no longer worked for him. He insisted it was “not a political dispute”, but a technical one. France needs a jet that can carry nuclear weapons and launch from aircraft carriers, while Germany does not. However, the problems go back much further.

Known as the Future Combat Air System (FCAS), the programme was announced to great fanfare in 2017 by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and then German chancellor, Angela Merkel. Spain joined in 2019.

The jet was meant to replace France and Germany’s existing fighters by 2040, equipped with stealth capabilities and surrounded by drones scouting ahead or drawing enemy fire, all sharing data in real time.

Europe already fields three competing fighter jets – the Eurofighter Typhoon, France’s Rafale and Sweden’s Gripen. Successive chief executives of the pan-European aerospace company Airbus have warned the continent must consolidate these projects. Yet the collapse of FCAS would do the opposite, with a British-Italian-Japanese Tempest project and a mooted Gripen successor already in the mix.

For a bloc that collectively spent €381bn (£333bn) on defence last year but struggles to turn that into military capability, the stakes are high. Threats from Russia are mounting and Donald Trump has told Europe it is time to pay for its own security.

But for years, the companies building the Franco-German jet have not been able to agree who is in charge.

Over in the UK, the papers are focusing on the arrest of the 66-year old former prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, and the consequences for the royal family.

My colleague Sam Jones looked also at the coverage in Europe, and discovered that neither the shock nor the historical significance of the event was lost on the European press.

And if there was one thing that correspondents and leader writers around the continent could agree on, it was that the former prince’s detention had plunged the British monarchy into a place of unprecedented danger and vulnerability.

Separately, German chancellor Friedrich Merz has addressed the national party conference of his CDU party earlier today, telling members that Germany must assert itself and take on greater responsibility as a new world order rapidly takes shape, Reuters reported.

He repeated his claim from last week’s Munich Security Conference that the rules-based international order “as we knew it no longer exists.”

“This will result in a new grand strategy for Germany in a united Europe. We are showing courage, the courage to shape the future, and the courage to assert ourselves,” he added.

Merz also reaffirmed his pledge that his party would never form a coalition with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland.

“We will not allow these people from the so-called Alternative for Germany to ruin our country,” he said, adding that “this party cannot be a partner of the CDU.”

Germany’s Pistorius was also asked about recent talk about Europe establishing its independent nuclear deterrence systems.

He says that while Europe needs to take more responsibility for its conventional deterrence and defence, but broader nuclear protection “is provided and will be provided by the US, at least for the foreseeable future.”

Picking up on Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz’s comments on nuclear deterrence at the Munich Security Conference last week, he said that Germany was legally bound to not have nuclear weapons.

But he said it could support defence capabilities of France and other allies “by conventional measures, but not in terms of nuclear participation – and that I think is quite clear.”

Meanwhile, UK’s junior defence minister Luke Pollard hailed the E5’s new initiative to work on advanced low-cost air defence systems, such as autonomous drones or missiles, as part of the ‘Low-Cost Effectors & Autonomous Platforms’ initiative, known as LEAP.

Its first focus will be on a new surface-to-air weapon – a lightweight, affordable weapon designed to counter the drone and missile threat, the UK’s Ministry of Defence said.

Speaking in Kraków, Pollard said that “it’s actions, not words, that will deter Putin,” adding that he feels confident that “this is the very first step of what we hope will be a series of initiatives under LEAP to look at how we can have ground to air and other capabilities that pulls our collective experience.”

Pollard also specifically wanted to send a message “to the people of Poland” and the Poles back in the UK, saying that they should “be in no doubt that when you need us, the UK will be there for you.”

German defence minister Boris Pistorius suggested the E5 grouping of Europe’s five countries – France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom – could expand its cooperation to have a joint tanker fleet or even establish a European version of the Five Eyes alliance.

“What can we do next? One idea could be to consider the idea of a joint tanker fleet or multi-domain taskforce, or even a European version of Five Eyes,” he said at a press conference in Kraków, Poland.

The Five Eyes is an intelligence-sharing alliance including Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

Pistorius also said that Russia’s continuing attacks on Ukraine amounted to “not simply a war,” but “terror against the civilian population of Ukraine.”

He said that “only maximum pressure from sanctions” can make Putin “back down” from his attacks.

Not much on sanctions from Brussels, but the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, is speaking at the E5 meeting in Kraków and she says that the bloc still aims to pass the 20th package of sanctions on Monday, despite ambassadors failing to agree on them today (11:58).

“Next Monday, we aim to adopt the 20th sanctions package against Russia,” she said.

She insisted:

“Sanctions are working.

They are severely hurting Russia’s economy, and each new measure further limits its ability to wage the war. Moscow is not invincible. Its army is suffering record casualties, and its economy is under heavy strain.

But Putin won’t end this war until the costs are higher than the benefits, and that is the point we must reach.”

In a fortunate coincidence, the European Commission’s daily press conference is just getting under way. Let’s see if we hear more on sanctions there.

Kicking things off, we are told that the commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, will travel to Ukraine on Monday to mark the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian aggression.

We are just getting a line via Reuters that EU ambassadors have failed to agree on the 20th package of sanctions against Russia today.

I will bring you more when we have it.

Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that he cannot yet confirm when and where a new round of talks on Ukraine will take place.

Earlier on Friday, Russian state news agency TASS reported, citing a source, that next talks would be again held in Geneva with the participation of delegations from Russia, Ukraine and the United States, Reuters said.

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them.

“It is the story of a spectacular intelligence success, but also one of several intelligence failures. First, for the CIA and MI6, who got the invasion scenario right but failed to accurately predict the outcome, assuming a swift Russian takeover was a foregone conclusion.

More profoundly, for European services, who refused to believe a full-scale war in Europe was possible in the 21st century. They remembered the dubious intelligence case presented to justify the invasion of Iraq two decades previously, and were wary of trusting the Americans on what seemed like a fantastical prediction.

Most crucially, the Ukrainian government was thoroughly unprepared for the oncoming assault, with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spending months dismissing increasingly urgent American warnings as scaremongering, and quashing last-minute concerns among his own military and intelligence elite, who eventually made limited attempts to prepare behind his back.”

As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a warning about 10,000 North Korean soldiers operating on the Russian territory, saying it is “extremely dangerous” that they get trained in modern hybrid warfare.

“They are learning on the territory of Russia now, because we are responding to Russia’s attacks. … What will they do with this knowledge? At the very least, they will bring this knowledge and experience home to North Korea,” he said in an interview with the Japanese outlet Kyodo News.

Zelenskyy offered also his take on the state of peace negotiations, saying that Ukraine remains “ready for real compromises,” but “not … at the cost of our independence and sovereignty.”

Kyiv said Friday that 10 people were arrested in Ukraine and Moldova on suspicion of planning to assassinate senior Ukrainian political figures on Moscow’s orders, with payouts of up to $100,000, AFP reported.

“As part of the work of a joint investigative team of Ukrainian and Moldovan law enforcement officers, an organised group has been exposed that was preparing contract killings of well-known Ukrainian citizens and foreigners,” Ukrainian prosecutor general Ruslan Kravchenko said in a statement.

Kravchenko said law enforcement had carried out 20 searches across the country and confiscated money, weapons, explosives and communications with Russian handlers.

Seven people were arrested in Ukraine during the raids and three more – including the organiser of the campaign – were apprehended in Moldova, the statement said.

Kyiv only named one of the officials targeted by the suspects, Andriy Yusov, who works on strategic communications for the Ukrainian military and coordinates prisoner exchanges with Russia.

Meanwhile, Poland has officially left the Ottawa Convention, which bans the use of antipersonnel mines, amid growing concerns about Russia’s aggressive posture.

The withdrawal means Poland will be able to lay anti-personnel mines along its eastern border in the space of 48 hours if a threat emerges, prime minister Donald Tusk said yesterday.

But Poland says it will only use mines in case of “realistic threat of Russian aggression,” AP noted.

Reuters noted that most of Russia’s European neighbours except Norway move to leave the treaty as they want to be ready to confront any potential threat from Russia.

Defence ministers of the E5 grouping – France, Germany, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom – are meeting in the Polish city of Kraków this morning.

They will be joined by their Ukrainian counterpart, Mykhailo Fedorov, the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, and Nato’s deputy secretary general Radmila Šekerinska.

Their meeting comes just days before the fourth anniversary of the full-scale Russian aggression on Ukraine, as allies seek to coordinate on the next steps.

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy stressed last night that Ukraine wanted to keep Europe involved in any further peace talks with Russia and the US “to ensure that Europe’s positions are taken into account.”

But as the negotiations show limited progress, there are growing questions about the next steps in attempts to resolve the conflict.

I will bring you all the key lines here, as well as other stories from across Europe.

It’s Friday, 20 February 2026, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.

Good morning.