Volodymyr Zelenskyy says continued attacks show Moscow does not want the war to end. Meanwhile, the Kremlin has said Ukraine’s leader showed a “complete lack of diplomatic ability” at his fiery meeting with Donald Trump. Listen to The World podcast as Yalda Hakim speaks to Zelenskyy below.
Monday 3 March 2025 14:16, UK
Ukraine’s energy minister says a visit to the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by the UN’s nuclear watchdog mission via occupied land was completely unacceptable.
A new monitoring mission from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) visited the Zaporizhzhia plant on Saturday, arriving for the first time through Russian territory,
Previously, monitoring missions entered the Russian-occupied area from territory controlled by Ukraine.
The ministry said German Galushchenko sent a letter to IAEA chief Rafael Grossi calling on him to ensure compliance with the law.
“The rotation… cannot be carried out without the consent of the Ukrainian authorities and is in violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the letter said.
We’ve just heard from Ukraine’s former president Petro Poroshenko, who has been speaking about Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the White House last week.
He said the only winner from the conflict in the Oval Office last Friday was Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“This is not good for Ukraine. This is not good for the US,” he tells Sky News presenter Jayne Secker.
“The only thing that is absolutely necessary to do, urgently, is to renew the dialogue between these two strategic partners.
“We cannot be a victim of the emotional relationship between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.”
Poroshenko, who led Ukraine from 2014-2019 before losing the election to Zelenskyy, said he hoped the president “would be wise enough to use any opportunity to renew the dialogue” with the US.
‘Stupid’ sanctions are ‘unconstitutional’
Poroshenko – a longtime nemesis of Zelenskyy – was sanctioned by the president last month on suspicion of “high treason” and assisting a terrorist organisation.
He was accused of making deals that pushed Ukraine into energy dependence on Russia.
Responding to those sanctions, Poroshenko said the only reason behind them was so that could Zelenskyy could “clear their political sphere in preparation for the election”.
“This stupid, unconstitutional illegal sanction is simply an attack on unity, an attack on democracy, an attack on the European Union, integration and aspiration,” he said.
Asked if he would consider running himself in future elections, Poroshenko said: “Nobody knows, but everything is possible.”
Donald Trump has claimed he is the only US president not to have handed any Ukrainian land over to Vladimir Putin.
Posting on Truth Social, he said: “Remember that when the weak and ineffective Democrat’s criticise, and the Fake News gladly puts out anything they say!”
Fact-check: There are no US presidents to have ever given any Ukrainian land to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
The likely new chancellor in Germany has been speaking at a news conference today about Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s trip to the White House last week.
Friedrich Merz, who leads the conservative CDU/CSU coalition that won last month’s snap German election, says events at the White House between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy last were an “intentional escalation”.
“It was not a spontaneous reaction to interventions by Zelenskyy, but obviously a manufactured escalation in this meeting in the Oval Office,” he told a news conference in Hamburg.
He also said that Europe was now under pressure to act quickly.
“We must now show that we are in a position to act independently in Europe,” he added.
Nigel Farage has been speaking about last week’s row between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
The Reform UK leader told LBC it was “very unwise to tell the Americans what would happen to them if they didn’t back him”
He conceded Trump and his vice president, JD Vance “bit back”, but added “Zelenskyy played it very badly”.
Farage, who is close to Trump, argued the Ukrainian president should return to Washington to sign the minerals deal.
Asked if he would treat a guest that way, he said: “I wouldn’t expect the guest to be rude to me in my own house. Absolutely not. I would expect a guest to treat me with respect.”
But he added of Trump and Vance: “I’m not defending what they did.”
‘Parroting White House talking points’
In response to the interview, Sir Ed Davey described Farage as “Trump’s own spokesman here in Britain”.
The Lib Dem leader added: “Zelenskyy showed courage and integrity in that room – in stark contrast to Farage’s cowardly approach of licking Trump’s boots.”
He accused Farage of “parroting White House talking points”, while Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said the Reform leader was “completely wrong”.
She accused him of “equivocating” over the war.
As talks continue between world leaders over how to secure peace in Ukraine, fighting continues to rage on.
Here, we run through the battlefield situation with territory maps, showing how much ground is currently held by Russian and Ukrainian forces.
The first map on this slider shows a wide view of the conflict, and from left to right you can see closer views of the fronts in Kharkiv, Donetsk and two views of the Russian region of Kursk.
Ursula von der Leyen says she will inform EU member states about plans to strengthen the European defence industry and the EU’s military capabilities tomorrow.
The European Commission president, who attended the summit on Ukraine in London yesterday, told reporters that Europe needs “a massive surge in defence, without any question”.
“We want lasting peace, but lasting peace can only be built on strength, and strength begins with strengthening ourselves,” she said.
Preparations to organise a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are now being “fast-tracked”, according to CNN.
It says there is a “renewed optimism” in Moscow that negotiations to end the war in Ukraine will now take a back seat in place of “potentially lucrative” US-Russia economic deals.
These, it says, are already being tabled behind closed doors.
For context: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov led the first round of US-Russia talks last month in Saudi Arabia, sidelining Ukraine.
Poland’s former president has signed a letter to Donald Trump expressing his “horror and distaste” at his spat with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House last week.
Ukraine’s president was publicly dressed down by Trump and vice president JD Vance during a car-crash sit down in front of reporters last Friday.
Lech Walesa, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, said the atmosphere in the Oval Office reminded him of Poland’s communist secret services and regime courts.
“They deprived us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government and our gratitude,” he said.
“We are shocked that Mr President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was treated in the same way.”
Walesa signed the letter together with other former Polish political prisoners, the post on Facebook showed.
We’ve just been hearing from Estonian President Alar Karis, who has been speaking to Sky News about Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his trip to the White House.
He says the onus is now on the rest of the world to mend relations between Zelenskyy and Donald Trump after their Oval Office spat.
“What happened in the Oval Office in Washington, we all saw it. I guess in a way it cleared the air,” he tells presenter Gareth Barlow.
“Now we’re thinking about what we can do. How to help Zelenskyy and Trump mend this relationship and what Europe can do to become a reliable partner for the US.”
He added: “Europe needs us and, and vice versa, US needs also Europe. And we have been a long-lasting relationship already. So, why should we break it right away, right now?”
On one-month truce
Karis did not comment much on the proposed one-month truce plan suggested by Emmanuel Macron in a French newspaper yesterday.
The French leader said France and Britain are proposing a partial one-month truce between Russia and Ukraine that would cover air, sea and energy infrastructure attacks but not ground fighting.
“We follow very, very carefully what’s happening at this very moment and all these different plans, and we are ready to take part of these plans,” Karis said.
“But this is the very early stage at the moment and we don’t know what these plans actually are, but we definitely support any kind of discussion which leads to peace in Ukraine.”
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