Zelenskyy to hold press conference after Trump suggests Ukraine to blame for Russian invasion – Europe live

in Brussels

EU sanctions against Russia will be extended to cover aluminium imports and dozens more “shadow” vessels covertly exporting Russian oil below a price cap imposed by western allies.

The approval of the package carries extra weight, amid fears in Brussels that Donald Trump will seek to lift US sanctions against Russia as part of his effort to make a peace deal.

The new package, 16th since the full scale invasion in 2022, includes a ban on imports of Russian aluminium into the EU, said by EU officials to generate significant revenues for Russia. A further 73 vessels believed to be circumventing the oil price cap will be banned from EU ports, although that does not cover all the ageing tankers thought to be helping Russia evade sanctions.

A total of 48 people and 35 entities face asset freezes and travel bans, although their names have not been revealed. The EU is also removing broadcasting licences from 8 Russian media outlets and excluding 13 banks from Swift international payments system.

In an earlier draft the EU planned to stop the sale of games consoles and joysticks to Russia, which are thought to be repurposed for use in drone warfare. Diplomatic sources did not immediately confirm if these items made the final list, ahead of the expected publication of the sanctions next week.

Jakub Krupa

Zelenskyy’s press conference has been pushed back, so we may have to wait a bit longer – but be assured that we will bring you all the key lines when it happens.

The Kremlin said this morning that any Putin-Trump meeting would take time to prepare, but could come before the end of the month, Tass and Interfax news agencies are reporting.

This will alarm European allies, after Trump was asked overnight if he could meet with Putin in February, and said: “Probably.”

UK prime minister Keir Starmer is the first European leader expected to meet with Trump in person at some point next week and European allies will hope this happens before the US president meets Putin.

Elsewhere, we have also hear from the Vatican this morning, as they issued a medical update on Pope Francis after his fifth night at the Gemelli hospital in Rome.

“The pope spent a peaceful night, woke up and had breakfast,” the Vatican said.

On Tuesday evening, the Vatican said that “the laboratory tests, chest X-ray, and the Holy Father’s clinical condition continue to present a complex picture,” with “the onset of bilateral pneumonia, which required additional drug therapy.”

US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg has just arrived to Kyiv.

Speaking to reporters at the train station, he says the US administration is listening to Ukrainian arguments, and stresses the US administration understands the need for security guarantees.

“My mission is to sit and listen and say, what are your concerns, … then go back to the US, talk to president Trump, secretary Rubio and the rest of the team, and just ensure that we get this one right,” he says.

Asked how confident he is that a good solution can be found, he says he is always confident of everything.

Kellogg was in Brussels and Warsaw yesterday, where he met with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, European Council president António Costa, and Polish President Andrzej Duda.

And just before Zelenskyy speaks, we are getting reports that EU envoys agreed on the sixteenth package of sanctions against Russia, EU diplomats told Reuters.

Sanctions include a Russian primary aluminium import ban and listing of 73 new shadow fleet vessels.

We will get more detail on this soon from the EU, no doubt.

Jakub Krupa

We are expecting to hear from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy soon.

We will bring you the latest here when he speaks.

Morning opening: Trump confuses Europe, again

Jakub Krupa

You just never know where things are going to go with US president Donald Trump.

When he started talking about Ukraine last night, at first, he appeared to give his approval to the idea of deploying European peacekeeping forces there (“all for” and “fine”) and said he had no plans for pulling out US troops from Europe, despite some suggestions that Russia’s Putin would ask him to do that. So far, so good.

But the longer his statement continued, the worse it became for Ukraine.

Trump eventually said that Zelenskyy “should have never started it, … could have made a deal,” as if it was Ukraine who invaded Russia and not the other way round, and repeated Russian key demands for elections in Ukraine, with unfounded allegations on president Zelenskyy’s poor approval rating.

This will ring alarm bells in Ukraine and across Europe again.

The US president also said last night that he was “much more confident” of a deal after the talks, adding “they were very good,” and that Russia “want to stop the savage barbarism.”

(Whisper it, but they can do it quite easily, being the ones who invaded.)

As Sean Savett, who was the spokesperson for the White House National Security Council under then-president Joe Biden, said more bluntly in a social media post: “Sounds like Trump bought Putin’s propaganda hook, line, and sinker.

On Tuesday, US state secretary Marco Rubio debriefed the Quint – France, Germany, Italy and the UK – and the European Union on the talks, promising they will stay “in close contact as we work to achieve a durable end to the conflict in Ukraine.”

But EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas issued a pointed warning: “Russia will try to divide us. Let’s not walk into their traps.”

One issue that was discussed during last night’s talks was a proposed moratorium on attacks on the energy infrastructure of Russia and Ukraine. It was rejected by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who insisted at his press conference that the Russians would never do that anyway as they only attack legitimate military targets.

You will be shocked – shocked! – to hear that Ukraine reported overnight a Russian attack on energy infrastructure in the southern region of Odesa, leaving at least 160,000 residents without heating and power. It is -7 degrees Celsius there.

More European allies are expected to meet in Paris today after protests over their exclusion from the hand-picked group invited for Monday’s first round of talks. The invitees reportedly include Norway, Canada, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Greece, Finland, Romania, Sweden and Belgium. We are yet to formally hear about it from the Élysée Palace.

No doubt there will be more consultations taking place behind the scenes, and US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog will be in Kyiv today.

I will bring you the latest.

It’s Wednesday, 19 February 2025, and this is Europe live. It’s Jakub Krupa here.

Good morning.