Who decides Ukraine's future? The talks of 19 February 2025
Strikes on Odesa, talks in Riyadh and sharp words from Washington framed a day when Ukraine's own voice was missing from the negotiating table.
Who gets to shape the end of a war when the country being invaded is not in the room? That question hung over 19 February 2025, a day on which diplomacy and bombardment ran in parallel.
Talks without Kyiv
On 18 February 2025, the United States and Russia began talks in Saudi Arabia about the war in Ukraine, with no European or Ukrainian participation. The delegations agreed to start a negotiating process for ending the war, to create high-level teams, and to normalise diplomatic and economic ties between the two countries. On 19 February 2025, Russian President Vladimir Putin praised the Riyadh talks as a "first step" towards restoring full diplomatic ties with the United States.
The exclusion of Europe had been made explicit two days earlier. On 17 February 2025, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov said Europe had no role in any negotiations on ending the war. The same day, European leaders gathered in France for a summit on Ukraine, after the U.S. administration announced the opening of peace talks with Russia without European participation.
Pressure on Zelenskyy
On 19 February 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "dictator", said he had done a "terrible job" and warned that he was "not going to have a country left" soon. The remarks came amid deteriorating relations between the two countries.
They followed a demand made on 18 February 2025, when Trump called for a new presidential election in Ukraine as part of a peace deal with Russia. The legal position, as later described, is that presidential elections had been scheduled for March or April 2024, but none were held because Ukrainian law does not allow them while martial law is in effect. Martial law has been in force since 24 February 2022 and is extended in 90-day intervals with parliament's approval. It was later extended for the 20th time, until 31 October 2026.
That framework matters for any assessment of the election call. The absence of a vote was a consequence of the legal regime of wartime, not a separate decision, and the demand placed that regime at the centre of a negotiation in which Ukraine was not yet taking part.
The war continued
The fighting did not pause for diplomacy. On 19 February 2025, Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine killed at least one person and injured 14 others. A large drone attack on energy infrastructure in Odesa left 160,000 residents without heating and electricity.
What the day showed
The day set out three pressures at once: a bilateral track between Washington and Moscow that moved towards normalised ties, a European side that had been told by Moscow it had no part to play, and a Ukrainian leadership facing public criticism from the U.S. president while its cities were under fire. For a review of Ukraine's institutions, the lesson is a practical one. Questions of legitimacy, elections and wartime governance were being argued abroad in terms that had direct bearing on domestic law, while civilians in Odesa dealt with the loss of heat and power.
