KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainians shared their disappointment Saturday that the U.S. may not provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles, while work to repair the damaged power supply to the country's Zaporizhzhia power plant soothed other concerns surrounding Europe's largest nuclear plant.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, after the U.S. leader signaled that Washington could provide Ukraine with the long-range missiles Kyiv believes will help bring Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.
Yet Zelenskyy ultimately left empty-handed — an outcome that dismayed, but did not surprise, many in the streets of the Ukrainian capital, who maintained their determination to end Russia’s 3 1/2-year invasion of their country.
One Ukrainian military serviceman, Roman Vynnychenko, told The Associated Press that he believed the prospect of Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine was a political “game.” “Ukraine won’t get those missiles,” he said.
Vynnychenko said Ukraine still needed to procure new weapons with or without American help, particularly as Russian drones and missiles continued to hit civilian infrastructure.
"Every day civilians and soldiers die, buildings collapse, our streets and cities are being destroyed,” Vynnychenko said.
Russia invaded its smaller neighbor in February 2022, sparking a 3 1/2-year conflict that has become a grinding war of attrition across a 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) frontline in Ukraine’s east and south.
Trump’s frustration with the conflict has surfaced repeatedly in the nine months since he returned to office. In recent weeks, he had shown growing impatience with Putin and expressed greater openness to helping Ukraine win the war, including with the sale of Tomahawks.
But Trump’s tone shifted again after he held a lengthy phone call with Putin on Thursday and announced that he planned to meet with the Russian leader in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks.
The talks raise new hopes that diplomatic progress could be made to end the war. But after multiple failed starts, Ukrainians are reluctant to believe that a significant breakthrough will take place soon.
“To tell you the truth, I look at the news, but nowadays I read only the headlines. And even those make me sad," Victoria Khramtsova, a psychologist, told the AP. "We have been at war for more than three years. We just want peace."
In the meantime, Russia continued its aerial bombardment of Ukraine, launching three missiles and 164 drones overnight, Ukraine’s Air Force said Saturday. It said that Ukrainian forces shot down 136 of the drones.
Two people were injured after Russian drones targeted a gas station in the Zarichny district of Sumy in northeast Ukraine, local officials said Saturday. They were two women aged 51 and 53, according to regional Gov. Oleh Hryhorov.
Elsewhere, work has begun to repair the damaged power supply to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the head of the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog said Saturday. The repairs are hoped to end a precarious four-week outage that saw it dependent on backup generators.
Russian and Ukrainian forces established special ceasefire zones for repairs to be safely carried out, said the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi. He hailed the restoration of off-site power as “crucial for nuclear safety and security.”
“Both sides engaged constructively with the IAEA to enable the complex repair plan to proceed,” Grossi said in a statement.
Work is due to be carried out in two phases, first on the Ferosplavna-1 power line, then the Dniprovska power line, the IAEA said. She also said that it was the 42nd time since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 that power lines to the plant had to be restored.
The Zaporizhzhia plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station, has been operating on diesel backup generators since Sept. 23 when its last remaining external power line was severed in attacks that Russia and Ukraine each blamed on the other.
The plant is in an area under Russian control since early in Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is not in service, but it needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Grossi said Saturday that emergency diesel generators were designed to be the “last line of defense” to help nuclear power plants cool their reactors, but that their use was now “an all too common occurrence.”
"As long as this devastating conflict goes on, nuclear safety and security remains under severe threat. Today, we had some rare positive news to report, but we are far from being out of the woods yet,” Grossi said.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
FILE - Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is seen from around twenty kilometers away in an area in the Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, Monday, Oct. 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison Friday in the first verdict from eight criminal trials over the martial law debacle that forced him out of office and other allegations.
Yoon was impeached, arrested and dismissed as president after his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024 triggered huge public protests calling for his ouster.
The most significant criminal charge against him alleges that his martial law enforcement amounted to a rebellion, An independent counsel has requested the death sentence over that charge, and the Seoul Central District Court will decide on that in a ruling on Feb. 19.
Yoon has maintained he didn’t intend to place the country under military rule for an extended period, saying his decree was only meant to inform the people about the danger of the liberal-controlled parliament obstructing his agenda. But investigators have viewed Yoon’s decree as an attempt to bolster and prolong his rule, charging him with rebellion, abuse of power and other criminal offenses.
In Friday’s case, the Seoul court sentenced Yoon for defying attempts to detain him and fabricating the martial law proclamation. He was also sentenced for sidestepping a legally mandated full Cabinet meeting, which deprived some Cabinet members who were not convened of their rights to deliberate on his decree.
Judge Baek Dae-hyun said in the televised ruling that imposing “a heavy punishment” was necessary because Yoon hasn’t shown remorse and has only repeated “hard-to-comprehend excuses.” The judge also said restoring legal systems damaged by Yoon’s action was necessary.
Yoon’s defense team said they will appeal the ruling, which they believe was “politicized” and reflected “the unliberal arguments by the independent counsel.” Yoon’s defense team argued the ruling “oversimplified the boundary between the exercise of the president’s constitutional powers and criminal liability.”
Park SungBae, a lawyer who specializes in criminal law, said there is little chance the court would decide Yoon should face the death penalty in the rebellion case. He said the court will likely issue a life sentence or a sentence of 30 years or more in prison.
South Korea has maintained a de facto moratorium on executions since 1997 and courts rarely hand down death sentences. Park said the court would take into account that Yoon’s decree didn’t cause casualties and didn’t last long, although Yoon hasn’t shown genuine remorse for his action.
South Korea has a history of pardoning former presidents who were jailed over diverse crimes in the name of promoting national unity. Those pardoned include strongman Chun Doo-hwan, who received the death penalty at a district court over his 1979 coup, the bloody 1980 crackdowns of pro-democracy protests that killed about 200 people, and other crimes.
Even if Yoon is spared the death penalty or life imprisonment at the rebellion trial, he may still face other prison sentences in the multiple smaller trials he faces.
Some observers say Yoon is likely retaining a defiant attitude in the ongoing trials to maintain his support base in the belief that he cannot avoid a lengthy sentence but could be pardoned in the future.
On the night of Dec. 3, 2024, Yoon abruptly declared martial law in a televised speech, saying he would eliminate “anti-state forces” and protect “the constitutional democratic order.” Yoon sent troops and police officers to encircle the National Assembly, but many apparently didn’t aggressively cordon off the area, allowing enough lawmakers to get into an assembly hall to vote down Yoon’s decree.
No major violence occurred, but Yoon's decree caused the biggest political crisis in South Korea in decades and rattled its diplomacy and financial markets. For many, his decree, the first of its kind in more than 40 years in South Korea, brought back harrowing memories of past dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s, when military-backed leaders used martial law and emergency measures to deploy soldiers and tanks on the streets to suppress demonstrations.
After Yoon's ouster, his liberal rival Lee Jae Myung became president via a snap election last June. After taking office, Lee appointed three independent counsels to look into allegations involving Yoon, his wife and associates.
Yoon's other trials deal with charges like ordering drone flights over North Korea to deliberately inflame animosities to look for a pretext to declare martial law. Other charges accuse Yoon of manipulating the investigation into a marine’s drowning in 2023 and receiving free opinion surveys from an election broker in return for a political favor.
A supporter of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol shouts slogans outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs and flags outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A supporter of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol waits for a bus carrying former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs as police officers stand guard outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs and flags outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
Supporters of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol hold signs outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
A picture of former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is placed on a board as supporters gather outside Seoul Central District Court, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Jan. 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)
