Here is where things stand on Thursday, February 26:

Fighting

• Seven people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a fertiliser factory in Russia’s Smolensk region, according to Russia’s TASS state news agency.
• Ten people were also injured in the attack on the PAO Dorogobuzh factory, Smolensk regional governor Vasily Anokhin said in a post on Russian social media site Max, describing the factory as a “civilian enterprise”.
• Four people were killed in Russian attacks near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, regional governor Ivan Fedorov said on the Telegram messaging app.
• In total, Fedorov said, Russian forces launched 643 air attacks on 32 settlements in the Zaporizhia region, with two people also injured in the strikes.
• Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s southern Kherson region, killing one person and injuring 11 others, regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin said on Telegram. The attacks damaged civilian infrastructure, including three high-rise residential buildings, a water tower, a phone tower and a gas pipeline, Prokudin said.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the village of Markovo in Russia’s Kursk region, regional governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram.
• Russia attacked Ukraine’s gas storage and production facilities in the Kharkiv and Chernihiv regions over two consecutive days, Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz said.
• Ukraine will accelerate the placement of anti-drone nets over roads in front-line areas, aiming to cover 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles) of roads by the end of this year, Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said.

Peace talks

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he expects the next session of trilateral talks between the United States, Russia and Ukraine, scheduled in March, to “create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level”.
• “This is the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war,” Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X, following a telephone call with US President Donald Trump.
• Zelenskyy told reporters that Ukraine has no nuclear weapons and that Russia’s claims that Kyiv is trying to obtain them are an attempt to pressure Ukraine during ongoing peace talks.

Politics and diplomacy

• South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said authorities secured the return of 11 South African men who were “lured” into fighting for Russia in Ukraine.
• China’s President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz discussed the Ukraine “crisis” during a meeting in Beijing, with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying in a statement afterwards that the “key to finding a solution lies in consistent dialogue and negotiation”, including by accommodating “the legitimate concerns of all sides”.

Energy

• Repairs to an oil transfer pipeline running through Western Ukraine cannot be completed quickly due to ongoing Russian attacks, Zelenskyy told reporters on Wednesday.
• Ukraine said the Druzhba pipeline, which passes through Ukraine carrying Russian oil to Eastern Europe, was damaged in a Russian attack in January, cutting off fuel supply to Hungary and Slovakia, which have protested Ukraine’s slow progress in repairing the pipeline.
•  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ordered extra security at critical energy infrastructure sites in the country after accusing Ukraine of trying to disrupt Hungary’s energy system.
• Last weekend, Hungary threatened to block a 90-billion-euro ($106bn) European Union loan for Kyiv and vetoed a new round of EU sanctions against Russia on Monday. Orban has promised to block any other EU measures to assist Ukraine until oil shipments resume through the pipeline.

Regional security

• The first Ukrainian drone production plant has started its operations in Britain, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, said on Wednesday.
• Germany’s government reduced the amount budgeted for strike drones to be used by German forces to 2 billion euros ($2.4 billion) from 4.3 billion euros, the Reuters news agency reported.