24 February 2026

February 2026 in brief

A drone attack on a bus carrying coal miners near Ternivka in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast killed 12 civilians, local authorities reported, and a bombing in central Lviv on 22 February killed a police officer and a soldier, which Zelensky said Russia organised. ^[1][2] Russia launched 71 missiles and 450 drones overnight on 3 February, two days after the Kyiv pause expired, according to Zelensky, critically damaging Kyiv's Darnytsia heat and power plant, and fired 50 missiles and 297 drones mainly at Kyiv and its suburbs on 22 February, Ukraine's air force said. ^[1][2] HRMMU reported that civilian casualties in 2025 were 31% higher than in 2024 and a spike in reported executions of captured Ukrainian soldiers, and IOM warned that 325,000 returnees could be displaced again as the energy crisis deepened. ^[1][2] Ukraine's commissioner for missing persons said more than 90,000 people were listed in the national register of those missing under special circumstances. ^[1] Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on 23 February that Ukrainian forces had retaken eight settlements and about 400 square kilometres in the south, and Ukraine's General Staff said Flamingo cruise missiles hit the Votkinsk missile plant in Russia. ^[1][2] Russian authorities said a Ukrainian drone strike on the Dorogobuzh fertilizer plant in Smolensk region killed at least seven people. ^[1] Talks in Abu Dhabi on 4 and 5 February produced an exchange of 157 prisoners each, but a Geneva round on 17 and 18 February ended without a breakthrough, and Zelensky told the Munich Security Conference that territorial concessions would not bring peace. ^[1][2][3]

Written from the records it cites; every figure appears in a cited record.