Zelenskyy Unveils Flamingo Cruise Missile as Peace Talks Stall and Trump Voices Frustration

On Thursday, day 1,276 of the war, Volodymyr Zelenskyy stood before reporters and made two announcements that pointed in the same direction. Russia, he said, was dodging negotiations. And Ukraine had a new long-range cruise missile that it believed was ready for the next stage of the fighting.

The missile is called Flamingo. Zelenskyy said it can hit targets as far as 3,000km (1,864 miles) away, that it has passed its tests, and that it is currently Ukraine's most successful missile. He told reporters that mass production could begin by February. He also said both sides are preparing for further fighting, pointing to Russian troop build-ups on one side and Ukraine's own preparations, including the Flamingo rollout, on the other.

The backdrop was one of the largest Russian assaults of the war so far. Zelenskyy said the latest attack involved 574 drones and 40 missiles, and he read it as evidence that Moscow does not want to sit down. "Now the signals from Russia are simply, to be honest, indecent," he said. In his account, Russia is trying to back away from meetings and carrying on with massive strikes.

One strike drew particular attention. A missile hit the US-owned electronics firm Flex in Zakarpattia, in Ukraine's far west, injuring nineteen people. Zelenskyy said Kyiv believes it was a deliberate strike on US property and American investment, and called it very telling that it came just as the world was waiting for a clear Russian answer on whether it would move toward ending the war.

Elsewhere, the human toll was recorded in smaller numbers. In Lviv, the governor, Maksym Kozytskyi, said one person was killed, three were wounded and 26 homes were damaged. Authorities in the Dnipropetrovsk region in the south-east reported damage to businesses, homes and gas lines. Later shelling of Kherson killed one person and wounded more than a dozen, according to a local official. In the Russian-occupied part of Donetsk, a Russian-installed official said Ukrainian shelling killed two people and wounded at least 21.

In Washington, Donald Trump appeared to vent. He has upended the years-long western policy of isolating Vladimir Putin, but has made little tangible progress toward a deal. In a social media post that blamed his predecessor, Joe Biden, he argued it is "very hard, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking an invader's country," and said there is "no chance of winning," comparing the situation to Ukraine and Russia. He closed by promising "interesting times ahead." He also told the rightwing outlet Newsmax that he was setting another two-week window for assessing the talks, after which "we'll have to maybe take a different tack." Trump has not met any of his earlier deadlines for securing peace or acting against Russia, which have ranged from 24 hours to 10 weeks.

Moscow, meanwhile, added conditions. Sergei Lavrov, Putin's foreign minister, said placing European troops in Ukraine to guarantee its security would be "foreign intervention" and was absolutely unacceptable to Russia. He insisted the Kremlin must hold a veto over any postwar support for Ukraine.

Two dates now frame what comes next: Trump's new two-week deadline, and February, when Flamingo production could begin at scale.