War

Viktor Orbán demands Ukraine reopen Druzhba pipeline for Russian deliveries; Zelenskyy says Ukraine is not losing the war. What we know on day 1,459

The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has threatened to veto the EU’s €90bn ($106bn) loan to Ukraine unless Kyiv restores Russian oil deliveries through a pipeline on its territory. Ukrainian authorities say the Druzhba pipeline was shut down after being damaged during a Russian attack in January, angering Kremlin allies Orbán and the Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico. “As long as Ukraine blocks the Druzhba pipeline, Hungary will block the €90 billion Ukrainian war loan,” Orbán said on Facebook on Friday. “We will not be pushed around!” Slovakian economy minister Denisa Sakova said Ukraine had postponed the resumption of oil deliveries until 24 February. On Wednesday, Fico declared a state of emergency over supplies and threatened retaliatory measures against Ukraine if the pipeline – which runs from Russia through its territory to Slovakia and Hungary – was not reopened.

Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, confirmed it was opposing the EU loan, saying on X on Friday: “By blocking oil transit to Hungary through the Druzhba pipeline, Ukraine violates the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, breaching its commitments to the European Union. We will not give in to this blackmail.”

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his country is not losing its war against Russia, has taken hundreds of square kilometres in a new counteroffensive and that European troops should deploy right on the frontline after any ceasefire. The Ukrainian president told Agence France-Presse ahead of the war’s fourth anniversary on 24 February: “You can’t say that we’re losing the war. Honestly, we’re definitely not losing it, definitely. The question is whether we will win.” Speaking at the presidential palace in Kyiv, he added: “That is the question – but it’s a very costly question.”

Zelenskyy said Kyiv’s forces were gaining ground in counterattacks along the southern frontline. “I won’t go into too many details,” Zelenskyy told AFP of the advances, “but today I can congratulate our army first and foremost – all the defence forces – because as of today, 300 [square] kilometres have been liberated.” He did not say over what timeframe and the claim could not be verified. Military bloggers have suggested some of those gains could have been aided by sweeping outages of Elon Musk’s Starlink internet terminals across the Ukraine front. Zelenskyy said Kyiv was taking advantage of the situation but conceded that Ukrainian forces had also experienced interruptions due to the outages. “There are problems, there are challenges,” he said.

Five of Europe’s top military powers have announced a joint programme to quickly develop low cost drones, as the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in the fighting in Ukraine drives a shift in modern warfare. Defence ministers and deputy ministers from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Poland said in a statement on Friday that the low-cost effectors and autonomous platforms (Leap) initiative would help “improve our collective security” within Nato while strengthening European cooperation. German defence minister Boris Pistorius said the aim of the project was to “rapidly and cheaply develop innovative systems, in particular for defence against drones, and then just as rapidly produce them in large numbers”. UK minister of state Luke Pollard said each member of the group has made a “multimillion” dollar commitment to advance the technology needed to start producing components of the new system “within 12 months”.

The US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade Ukraine but most of Europe – including Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. Shaun Walker’s exclusive account draws on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries. As the war anniversary 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.

Ukrainian drones damaged a site in southern Russia’s Udmurtia region, the governor said early on Saturday. Injuries had resulted, Alexander Brechalov also said on Telegram. An unofficial Ukrainian Telegram site, Realna Viyna, said Ukrainian forces had attacked a plant manufacturing Russian missiles in the city of Votkinsk in Udmurtia, about 1,400km (780 miles) from Ukraine and posted what it said were pictures of the strike.

Ukrainian competitors will boycott the Milano Cortina Paralympics opening ceremony on 6 March in Verona, their committee said on Friday, due to the authorisation of some Russian and Belarusian athletes with their national flags. The International Paralympic Committee’s allocation of 10 combined slots to Russian and Belarusian athletes has created a political storm over the coming Games.

More than 5,000 women and girls have been killed in Ukraine and another 14,000 injured since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, Sofia Calltorp, the head of UN Women in Geneva, told reporters on Friday.