I've heard Donald Trump's comments before - from anti-Western Russian state TVpublished at 17:32 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

17:32 GMT 19 February

Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring's Russia editor

It’s extraordinary to what degree America’s rhetoric on Ukraine now coincides with Russia’s, and how different it is from Europe’s, Nato’s and Ukraine’s.

First, we were told by US officials that Ukraine should forget about joining Nato or reclaiming territory occupied by Russia, and now Donald Trump says that it was Ukraine that started the war and that Volodymyr Zelensky is an unpopular "dictator" whose mandate has expired.

I’ve been hearing these points of view for years – from the most virulently anti-Western commentators on Russian state TV.

To hear them from a US president at what is certainly one of the darkest hours in their history amounts to nothing short of a betrayal for Ukrainians.

Moscow knows this is unprecedented in recent history, and is clearly happy.

“No Western leader has ever said anything like this, and he’s said it several times,” Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said, referring to Trump blaming Ukraine for the war.

“This means that he understands our position.”

This is a public war of words between Trump and Zelenskypublished at 17:18 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

17:18 GMT 19 February

Nomia Iqbal
Reporting from Washington DC

Donald Trump’s angry comments come after Zelensky said the US president was "living in a disinformation space". Zelensky himself was responding to Trump saying Kyiv "could have made a deal" earlier to end the war, but not Russia.

Under the Biden administration, the US and Ukraine were very close but Trump has made it clear that Kyiv shouldn’t receive any more aid without getting anything in return.

His attempt to get access to Ukraine’s rare minerals was rejected by Zelensky, who said no security guarantees were offered in exchange.

Trump also accused Zelensky of being a "dictator without elections". The Ukrainian president won more than 73% of the vote in 2019 but a new election hasn’t been held since, due to the country being under martial law (which we've explained more about in a previous post).

Trump has made it clear he wants the war to end as soon as possible – one of his campaign promises – even if it means giving up territory to Russia. But it’s horrified Kyiv and its allies who are worried about the US president aligning more closely with Moscow.

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Miami

I've just been exchanging messages with Mick Mulroy, a former Pentagon official who once served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East - a key position that placed him in the highest rungs of the defence department's leadership during the first Trump administration.

Mulroy, a former Marine who also served as an officer in the CIA's secretive paramilitary operations branch, told me that "Russia is not a friend of the United States".

"They are one of our most significant adversaries," he said.

Continued military support for Ukraine, he added, "is in the security interest of the US".

"They are substantially reducing the military capacity of Russia. Again, our adversary," Mulroy said.

Additionally, Mulroy said that he believes the "best way forward" would be negotiations with both Ukraine and other European countries to be ready to step up support "if Russia does not agree to something that Ukraine is also willing to agree to".

Fact-checking Trump's claim about Zelensky not holding electionspublished at 16:45 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

16:45 GMT 19 February

In Donald Trump's recent Truth Social post that we reported on, he claimed President Zelensky "refuses to have elections", calling the leader a "dictator".

He's repeating a claim he made yesterday from Florida, where he drew attention to the fact that Ukraine has not held a presidential election since 2019, when Zelensky - previously a comedian with no political base - swept to power.

His first five-year term of office was due to come to an end in May 2024. However, Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means elections are suspended.

In November, all parties in Ukraine's parliament backed postponing elections until the war end and Zelensky has vowed to hold a new election once the conflict ends. Ukraine's law banning presidential, parliamentary and local elections during wartime was passed in 2015, well before Zelensky was elected.

Trump's intervention on the subject came just hours after the Kremlin questioned Zelensky's legitimacy as his term in office has ended, a claim Moscow has repeatedly made in the past months.

Trump appeared aware that it has been a frequent Russian allegation, saying: "That's not a Russian thing, that's something coming from me, from other countries."

• BBC Verify has been busy fact-checking these claims, along with others made by President Trump about the war in Ukraine

The Ukrainian foreign minister says that his people and president Zelensky "refused to give in to Putin’s pressure. Nobody can force Ukraine to give up."

In a post on X, Andrii Sybiha writes that Ukraine "withstood the most horrific military attack in Europe’s modern history and three years of a total war."

"We will defend our right to exist."

It comes just moments after US President Donald Trump took another swipe at Zelensky's leadership.

Image source, EPA

Bernie Sanders, an independent US senator, is reacting to Donald Trump's involvement with Russia now.

"Trump and his American oligarchs are now openly aligning themselves with Putin and his Russian oligarchs," Sanders writes in a post on X.

"This Putin-Trump alliance means abandoning our allies, supporting authoritarianism and undermining our democratic traditions."

Trump has also taken a swipe at Europe, saying the war in Ukraine is "far more important to Europe than it is to us".

"We have a big, beautiful ocean as a separation," he says.

He adds that Europe has "failed to bring peace" in the region.

"Zelensky better move fast or he is not going to have a country left," US President Donald Trump says in a post on Truth Social.

Labelling Zelensky "a dictator", Trump writes: "I love Ukraine, but Zelensky has done a terrible job, his country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died."

Trump says in the meantime, the US is "successfully negotiating an end to the war with Russia".

For context: Zelensky's presidential term expired last May, however Ukraine has been under martial law since the Russian invasion in February 2022, which means presidential elections are suspended.

All eyes on future Trump-Putin meetingpublished at 15:58 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

15:58 GMT 19 February

Bernd Debusmann Jr
Reporting from Miami

Image source, Getty Images

Greetings from Florida, where just a short while ago President Trump touched down in Miami.

Observers around the world will be anxiously waiting to hear any further word about a potential meeting with Vladimir Putin.

Speaking at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach yesterday, Trump said that a meeting would "probably" happen before the end of the month.

Trump had previously suggested that the meeting would take place in Saudi Arabia, where Russian and US delegations are currently meeting to discuss Ukraine's fate.

The US president has in the last several days repeatedly spoken of his ties with his Russian counterpart, claiming that Putin's invasion of Ukraine would have never taken place had he been in office in 2022.

"I used to discuss it with Putin," Trump said at Mar-a-Lago. "It was the apple of his eye... but there was never a chance of him going in. And I told him: you better not go in."

The Kremlin, for its part, has been less committal about a potential summit.

"[At the end of February] there may be [a meeting]," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Wednesday. "Or there may not be."

Image source, Reuters

US envoy Keith Kellogg has met with Ukrainian president Zelensky's head of office, Andriy Yermak, who says it's "important" that Kellogg gets all of the information, including what is happening on the front lines and Ukraine's resilience and spirit.

In a post on X following the meeting, Yermak says they "count on the continued support of the United States for our country. We want our relationship to remain open, based on trust and the principles of mutual success."

How the war comes to an end is "of great importance", he says he told Kellogg, adding that "Russia constantly manipulates information, tries to sow division, and spreads lies to turn us against each other".

He again emphasises the Ukrainian position that they need to be involved in all talks about ending the war.

They "seek a strategic, long-term, and comprehensive partnership with the United States", he adds.

President Zelensky has said he would like to show Kellogg the frontline whilst he visits the country.

Zelensky holds back true feeling on USpublished at 15:32 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

15:32 GMT 19 February

Sarah Rainsford
BBC Eastern Europe Correspondent

Volodymyr Zelensky is doing his best not to seem rattled, though he must be fuming inside.

Donald Trump’s latest comments – blaming Ukraine for the war and calling for new elections there – might have come straight from the Kremlin. It seems Vladimir Putin was mightily persuasive on the phone last week.

But instead of shouting with outrage, Zelensky has chosen to point out publicly where Trump is wrong (and Putin). It’s not 4% support for his presidency, for example, it’s 57%. Not $500bn in US support to Ukraine, more like $100bn.

Donald Trump is “living in a disinformation space”, Zelensky says, but he even couches that in talk of respect and gratitude. It can’t be easy to watch your closest ally suddenly switch position on all that is important to you.

But Zelensky knows he still needs the US and he’s clearly opted to hold his full feelings in for now – and offer some facts instead.

As he put it: “I would like the Trump team to have more truth."

We reported earlier on a Russian strike on Ukraine's southern city of Odesa late on Tuesday.

Officials said earlier today that many residents have been left without heating, electricity and water supply.

The mayor of Odesa, Hennady Trukhanov said 14 schools, 13 kindergartens and more than 500 houses were affected.

Here are the latest pictures from the city:

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Image source, EPA

Image source, Reuters

As world leaders debate the future of the war in Ukraine, civilians watch on.

In Novopavlivka, near the front line, Yurii Bilyk stands by the school he is a director of. It's badly damaged.

“We have worked here for so many years. Many generations were brought up here – I went here myself, I am local," Bilyk tells the Reuters news agency.

"It's painful to look at this, and painful to realise that the front is now nearby.

“Europe has to wake up and take a different look at the situation, not be on the sidelines.”

Another local, Taisiya Pavlenko, says she had "big hopes" for Donald Trump, but "not anymore".

“I am not sure if it's right or wrong, but I would agree on some deal already. So many lives were lost, many children and grown-ups died. So many! I would put an end to it," she adds.

Image source, Reuters

At least two people have been killed and two injured in a strike on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, which is situated in the Donetsk region, according to a statement from the regional head Vadym Filashkin.

Preliminary information suggests Russia dropped four guided bombs on the city this morning, the statement reads.

Filashkin says 34 houses, one administrative building, three power lines and three gas pipelines were damaged during the strike, and adds that one additional person may be under the rubble of one of the destroyed houses.

Russia has not commented on the strike.

Putin and Trump seem keen to deal with each other and no one elsepublished at 14:45 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

14:45 GMT 19 February

Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring's Russia editor

Image source, Reuters

Vladimir Putin’s “positive assessment” of the talks in Saudi Arabia is no surprise to anyone.

The men he sent to Riyadh were equally upbeat, and Donald Trump’s recent remarks on Ukraine suggest there is a lot of common ground between the two presidents.

However, Putin sounded slightly less belligerent than his US counterpart when asked about complaints that Ukraine and Europe were excluded from the talks. He said they were focused on restarting Russian-US dialogue, which needed no “mediators”.

Does this leave a door open for the Ukrainians and Europeans? Unlikely, given how keen the two presidents seem to be to deal with each other and no one else on key issues.

What is missing from Putin’s remarks is any indication of how exactly he and Trump are planning to resolve them.

Putin says that Donald Trump told him over the phone that Ukraine would be included in negotiations to end the war.

He says that during the call, the US president said: "Of course, the United States proceeds from [the position] that the negotiating process will be happening with the participation of Russia and Ukraine".

"Nobody is excluding Ukraine from this process," he adds.

Putin also tells reporters that the goal of the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia was "the restoration" of bilateral relations.

He says that without "an increase in the trust level" between Russia and the US, it is "impossible to solve many issues, including the Ukrainian crisis".

The Kremlin leader says Moscow "has never refused from having contacts with Europeans, never refused from negotiating process with Ukraine".

For context: Yesterday, the Kremlin said Putin is prepared to talk to Zelensky "if necessary". Prior to that, Putin has repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of Zelensky, whose presidential term expired last May, but Ukrainian officials say Russia’s continuing invasion and martial law in Ukraine make it practically impossible to hold presidential elections.

Putin, who is currently speaking to reporters in St Petersburg, admits that he "has no close relations" with Trump, and that they haven't seen each other "for a long time".

The Russian president says he believes Trump also wants to meet with him.

"But this is not enough," he adds, saying that the two leaders' teams need to work on a several key issues before such talks could be held.

"This is not an easy task," Putin says.

Image source, Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he would meet his US counterpart Donald Trump "with pleasure".

Speaking to reporters, the Kremlin leader stresses that if such a meeting were to take place it would have to be well prepared.

Russian broadcasters sound note of caution on Trumppublished at 13:40 Greenwich Mean Time 19 February

13:40 GMT 19 February

Vitaliy Shevchenko
BBC Monitoring's Russia editor

Russian state TV agrees with Trump on Ukraine – but sounds a note of caution. It hasn’t embraced the US president as a friend, but has been saying that his policies benefit Russia.

“The policy pursued by Donald Trump’s administration is not about a multipolar world, it’s about asserting America’s supremacy and hegemony, but using different means,” says the presenter of a daytime talk show on Channel One.

“Of course, this policy drives a wedge into the Western community, which is totally in Russia’s interest.”

Commenting on Donald Trump’s latest remarks on Ukraine, Dmitry Suslov says they amount to a “verdict against Zelensky, he should simply shoot himself”.

Panellists on The Big Game talk show also agree with Donald Trump’s claims that Zelensky’s approval ratings are low and his presidential mandate has expired.

It's a completely different mood on Ukrainian TV.

“I don’t get the impression that European leaders are ready for decisive action even in this situation,” says MP Yehor Chernev. “To be frank, this isn’t looking particularly good.”

Speaking on the pooled TV marathon broadcast by several key TV stations, MP Chernev adds: “There’s a lack of leadership in Europe, there’s no unity, no understanding of the threat.”