Ukraine-Russia: Zelensky says 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers killed in war as Kremlin vows to fight on

Donald Trump’s administration has pushed both Kyiv and Moscow to find a compromise to end the four-year-old war, but the two sides remain far apart on key points despite several rounds of talks with US officials.

“The good news is that for the first time in a very long time, we have technical military teams from both Ukraine and Russia meeting in a forum that we’ll also be involved in with our experts,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio said in Washington yesterday.

“I don’t want to say talks alone is progress, but it’s good that there’s engagement going on,” he said.

The most sensitive issues are Moscow’s demands that Kyiv give up land it still controls and the fate of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, which sits in a Russian-occupied area.

Moscow wants Kyiv to pull its troops out of all the Donetsk region, including heavily fortified cities regarded as one of Ukraine’s strongest defences, as a precondition for any deal.

Ukraine said the conflict should be frozen along current front lines and rejects any unilateral pullback of its forces.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that Russian troops would keep fighting until Kyiv made “decisions” that could bring the war to an end.

Russia occupies about 20 per cent of Ukraine’s national territory, including Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region seized before the 2022 invasion. Analysts say Russia has gained about 1.5 per cent of Ukrainian territory since early 2024.

“Russia is not winning its war against Ukraine,” Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha told online media outlet Liga.

Ukraine’s energy minister warned households on Wednesday that planned blackouts could worsen in coming days and Russian forces could launch a new air attack to further disable power and heating networks.

Denys Shmyhal said well over 200 emergency crews were at work in the capital restoring heating to apartment buildings after a series of mass Russian attacks in January.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Tuesday that more than 1,100 buildings remained without heating.

“The situation with energy remains very difficult. There is a risk that timetables for power cuts could get worse,” Shmyhal wrote on Telegram after a daily meeting of senior officials devoted to energy issues.

“This is linked to the last strike and the fact that the shortfalls in generation in the power system are still significant. And the Russians are preparing for new attacks on the energy sector in the coming week.”

Shmyhal said that buildings where restoring heating is likely to take some time were to receive assurances that they will have electricity for 18 hours a day.

United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres called the expiration of the New START Treaty a grave moment for international peace and security and urged Russia and the United States to negotiate a new nuclear arms control framework without delay.

New START, which was due to run out at midnight on Wednesday, capped the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy, and the deployment of land – and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

“For the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the strategic nuclear arsenals of the Russian Federation and the United States of America – the two States that possess the overwhelming majority of the global stockpile of nuclear weapons,” Guterres said in a statement.

He said the dissolution of decades of achievement in arms control “could not come at a worse time – the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is the highest in decades”.

At the same time, Guterres said there was now an opportunity “to reset and create an arms control regime fit for a rapidly evolving context” and welcomed the appreciation by the leaders of both Russia and the United States of the need to prevent a return to a world of unchecked nuclear proliferation.

“The world now looks to the Russian Federation and the United States to translate words into action,” Guterres said.

“I urge both states to return to the negotiating table without delay and to agree upon a successor framework that restores verifiable limits, reduces risks, and strengthens our common security.”

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has criticised Europe for lax regulation of oil tankers that he says Russia is exploiting to continue to trade and fund its war.

Last year, he said, Russia involved more than 122 vessels in its oil trade that are operated or legally owned by European entities.

“This constitutes a significant portion of Russia’s tanker fleet,” he said in his nightly address.

“Europe must act far more decisively to counter Russia’s tanker fleet.”

Fighting has intensified in recent weeks in key areas of the southeastern front, Ukraine’s military has said, particularly around the town of Huliaipole – 40km (25 miles) to the east of Tavriiske.

In Tavriiske and nearby villages, which sit in a bulge in the frontline with Russian forces on three sides, residents told Reuters during a recent visit that they feared for their lives amid the constant threat of drone and bomb attacks.

In the last few weeks, buses have stopped running to the village of Tavriiske in southeast Ukraine from the major city of Zaporizhzhia, some 50km (31 miles) away.

As the war with Russia has drawn nearer, the village is slowly emptying. Maryna Vyshnevska, 35, said it had become too dangerous for her and her five children – some of the few remaining residents – to stay.

“We thought they (the Russians) would be driven back and all this would stop,” Vyshnevska said, before packing her family and a handful of belongings into a police evacuation bus. “But when we realised it would only get worse and worse, it was better to leave,” she said.

At least seven people were killed and eight more hurt in Russian attacks in the town of Druzhkivka in the Ukraine-controlled frontline region of Donetsk in the east, the regional governor said.

Russia shelled the town with cluster munitions, targeting the market, and dropped two aerial bombs, Vadym Filashkin said his Telegram channel.

Filashkin said the town located about 11 miles from the frontline was struck directly at a busy morning market.

“This is another targeted war crime and further proof that all Russian statements about a ‘truce’ are worthless,” Filashkin wrote.

European Union ambassadors have approved details of a €90bn (£77bn) loan for Ukraine, an initiative agreed by EU leaders in December to meet most of Kyiv’s financial needs in 2026-2027 and keep up its fight against Russia’s invasion.

The ambassadors reached the agreement at a closed-door meeting in Brussels yesterday, diplomats said.

The text of the agreement was not immediately available but the Council of the EU said in a statement that two thirds of the funds would be spent on military aid and one third on general budget support.

On military aid, the deal stipulates that Kyiv should use the loan primarily to buy weapons from Ukraine or the EU but could buy from other countries if certain conditions are met.

“Defence products should in principle only be procured from companies in the EU, Ukraine, or EEA-EFTA countries. Should Ukraine’s military needs require the urgent delivery of a defence product which happens not to be available in the EU, Ukraine or an EEA-EFTA country, a set of targeted derogations would apply,” the Council said.

The agreement also requires approval by the European Parliament, which diplomats said they hoped would come soon to allow the Commission to start borrowing on the markets and make a first payment to Ukraine in early April.

EU leaders agreed in December to fund the loan through EU borrowing rather than back a plan to use Russian assets frozen in the bloc.