LONDON — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged foreign partners to apply more pressure to Moscow as Russia followed up Tuesday’s historic talks with the U.S. in Saudi Arabia with a major missile and drone strike.
The U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh — to which Ukraine was not invited — represented “an important step forward” toward ending Russia’s three-year-old invasion of its neighbor, according to a State Department readout.
Hours after the discussions concluded with a commitment to continue talks, Russia launched a major missile and drone barrage into Ukraine. Ukraine’s air force reported 167 drones and two Iskander ballistic missiles launched into the country, with 106 intercepted and 56 more lost in flight.
Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov reported a “massive enemy strike on a densely populated area of the city” causing electricity, heating and water outages.
Ukrainian forces search for drones in the sky over Kyiv, Ukraine, during a Russian drone strike on Feb. 18, 2025.
Gleb Garanich/Reuters
Zelenskyy said in a post to social media that the strike targeted “civilian energy facilities,” in keeping with longstanding Russian doctrine. “For nearly three years now, the Russian army has relentlessly used missiles and attack drones against them,” he said.
“Just yesterday, after the notorious meeting in Riyadh, it became clear that Russian representatives were once again lying, claiming they do not target Ukraine’s energy sector,” Zelenskyy continued.
“Yet, almost simultaneously, they launched another attack, with drones striking electrical transformers,” he wrote. “And this is during winter — it was minus 6 degrees Celsius at night.”
“We must never forget that Russia is ruled by pathological liars — they cannot be trusted and must be pressured,” the president said.
Kyiv’s exclusion from the Saudi talks have badly unsettled Ukraine and its European allies. Trump was unapologetic when speaking with reporters Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, just as Odesa came under attack.
“They’ve had a seat for three years and a long time before that,” Trump said of Ukraine, suggesting Kyiv could have made a deal with Moscow to avoid the huge loss of lives and land.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Feb. 15, 2025 in Munich, Germany.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Trump said he believes he has “the power to end this war,” while falsely claiming Ukraine started the conflict against Russia. The war began when Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022, a campaign that followed eight years of cross-border Russian aggression in Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
“I think it’s going very well,” Trump said of U.S. efforts to end the war. “But today I heard, oh, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years. You should have ended it three years — you should have never started it.”
Trump also said that Ukraine should hold new elections — currently not possible due to the imposition of martial law — and falsely claimed that Zelenskyy’s public approval rating was “down to 4%.”
The president did not offer a source for the claim. A recent poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology showed Zelenskyy has the trust of 57% of Ukrainians, down from 77% in December 2023 and 90% in May 2022 around three months after Russia’s invasion.
Zelenskyy suggested on Tuesday that the U.S.-Russia talks were merely reviving ultimatums issued by Moscow in the early stages of its invasion.
“I have the impression that there are now some negotiations happening and they have the same mood, but between Russia and the United States,” Zelenskyy said during a visit to Turkey.
“Again, about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he added. “It’s interesting, if Ukraine didn’t yield to ultimatums in the most difficult moment, where does the feeling come from that Ukraine will agree to this now?”
In this handout picture released by the official Saudi Press Agency, Secretary of State Marco Rubio shakes hands with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during their meeting at Diriyah Palace, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Feb. 18, 2025.
-/SPA/AFP via Getty Images
“I never intended to yield to Russia’s ultimatums and I don’t intend to now,” Zelenskyy added.
In Riyadh, the U.S. and Russia agreed to appoint as-yet unnamed special representatives to continue peace talks, according to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Addressing the Russian parliament on Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov — who led Moscow’s team in Riyadh — told lawmakers that “the atmosphere is positive, the intentions are correct, we will see how the situation develops further, what decisions will be made.”
He added, “The main thing is to meet, listen and hear, make decisions that will be realistic.”
Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told the state-controlled Channel One television channel that Trump’s Ukraine-Russia envoy — Keith Kellogg — would negotiate a settlement with Kyiv and European nations.
Kellogg arrived in Kyiv on Wednesday morning, where he is expected to hold talks with Ukrainian leaders.
Kellogg told reporters his “mission is to sit and listen” and then report back to Trump. He parried questions about whether Trump is siding with Putin, saying that Trump wants to end the war because “he understands the human suffering” it is causing.
Kellogg added that he agrees with Trump that the war would never have begun if he had been president at the time.
ABC News’ Fidel Pavlenko and Will Gretsky contributed to this report.
