According to Fixygen, the cryptocurrency market ended the working week of February 9-15 in consolidation mode after sharp movements at the beginning of the month: Bitcoin fell by approximately 1.7% over the period, from $70,127.9 on February 9 to $68,949.8 on February 15, with an intraday range of around $65,100-71,400.
Ethereum looked weaker: over the week, the price fell by about 4.6%—from $2,104.66 on February 9 to $2,007.02 on February 15. The weekly lows for ETH were around $1,899, indicating increased volatility in the altcoin segment.
Investor sentiment in the middle of the week was influenced by expectations of key US macro data and uncertainty about the trajectory of interest rates. Against this backdrop, Bitcoin quickly lost several percent on certain days, and crypto assets moved in tandem with risky segments of the stock market.
Interest in exchange-traded products remained a separate stabilizing factor: industry reviews noted inflows into iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) and iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) even amid falling prices.
According to industry daily reports, at the beginning of the period under review, the overall market attempted to recover from the previous days’ decline, and capitalization returned to around $2.4 trillion, but it failed to consolidate its steady growth over the week.
European defense technology company Stark has announced the opening of an R&D center in Ukraine, according to a company statement. The center will occupy an area of 2,000 square meters and will be designed to accommodate more than 200 specialists who will work on research, development, integration of the company’s systems, training, and technical support.
Stark added that the introduction of such a center will allow the developed systems to move more quickly from design to production.
“Russia’s war against Ukraine has fundamentally changed the security landscape in Europe. Deterrence depends on defense innovation as well as sustainable production,” Maxim Cherkis, COO of STARK Ukraine, emphasized in the release.
In the future, the company plans to further scale both its research and technical presence in Ukraine.
In addition, Stark announced in a press release the opening of a new office in Greece.
Stark is a European defense technology company founded in 2024 and headquartered in Berlin. The team specializes in unmanned systems in various fields. STARK has offices in Germany, Ukraine, the UK, Sweden, and Greece. One of the company’s developments is the Virtus kamikaze drone, which can reach speeds of over 120 km/h before diving at 250 km/h to reach its target.
In 2025, 14,124 foreigners permanently residing in Finland obtained citizenship, which is a new record, according to preliminary data from the Tilastokeskus statistical service.
According to this data, the largest number of Finnish citizenships in 2025 were granted to citizens of Iraq (1,960), followed by citizens of the Russian Federation (1,491) and citizens of Syria (1,282).
Tilastokeskus provides figures for the top three countries in its publication, but does not disclose the number of Ukrainians who obtained citizenship or their place in the overall ranking. A more detailed breakdown by citizenship in the official statistics is usually published later as a separate data set.
According to Tilastokeskus, the largest group of arrivals in Finland in 2025 were citizens of Ukraine (8,388), followed by citizens of the Philippines (2,701) and Sri Lanka (2,435).
On Monday, February 16, at night in the western regions, moderate snow, in Vinnytsia and Zhytomyr regions, moderate, in some places heavy snow; in most northern regions, heavy snow, blizzard; wet snow and rain in the rest of the country, with heavy precipitation mainly in the form of rain in the Sumy, Cherkasy, Poltava, and Kharkiv regions; light snow during the day, mainly rain in the east of the country, moderate precipitation in the northeast (no significant precipitation in the western, southern, and Vinnytsia regions).
According to the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center, in the western, northern, and most central regions, there will be icy patches on the roads in some places.
The wind will be mainly northwesterly, 7-12 m/s, with gusts of 15-20 m/s in Ukraine, except in the west.
The temperature at night and during the day in the western, Zhytomyr, and Vinnytsia regions will be 7-12° below zero; in the Carpathian region and the north of the country, 4-9° below zero; in most central and Sumy regions, from 3° above zero to 2° below zero; in the east and southeast, 3-8° above zero.
In Kyiv, there will be heavy snow on Monday night and light snow in some places during the day. There will be ice on the roads in some places. The wind will be mainly northwesterly, 7-12 m/s, with gusts of 15-18 m/s, and blizzards at night and in the morning. The temperature at night and during the day will be 7-9° below zero.
According to data from the Boris Sreznevsky Central Geophysical Observatory, the highest daytime temperature in Kyiv on February 16 was 11.8°C in 1957, and the lowest nighttime temperature was -23.2°C in 1911.
On Tuesday, February 17, there will be no significant precipitation, with only light rain in Crimea during the day.
The wind will be northeast, 5-10 m/s.
In the western, northern, and most central regions, there will be icy patches on the roads in some places.
Temperature at night 8-13°, in the northern part 14-19°, during the day 4-9° below zero, in most central regions at night 3-8°, during the day 0-5° below zero, in Transcarpathia, the south and southeast of the country at night 1-6° below zero, and 0-3°C during the day.
In Kyiv on Tuesday, there will be no significant precipitation. There will be icy patches on the roads in some places. The wind will be north-easterly, 5-10 m/s. The temperature at night will be 15-17°, and during the day 7-9° below zero.
EU enlargement is a geopolitical decision, and changes need to be made to the process of accepting new members, but EU member states are not yet ready to name a specific date for Ukraine’s accession, as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insists, said EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas.
“We really need to work on this. But I think I have the feeling that the member states are not ready to name a specific date,” she said in response to questions at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, according to a correspondent from the Interfax-Ukraine agency.
Kallas recalled that, in addition to Ukraine, Montenegro and Albania have also been on the list of candidates for accession for a long time.
“I think that the priority, the urgent need to move forward and show that Ukraine is part of Europe, exists,” the head of European diplomacy noted.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs also agreed with the EU’s unwillingness to set a date for Ukraine’s accession today.
“When I spoke with many heads of state and government of the European Union, I got the impression that at this stage, as we speak here in Munich in February, there is no readiness to set a date,” he said.
In his opinion, there is a desire to see Ukraine become part of the EU as soon as possible.
“The EU has always been very creative when it was really necessary. And we can find a formula that will probably suit us,” the Latvian president believes.
According to him, two other issues need to be resolved as part of this decision: the admission of candidate countries from the Western Balkans, which have long been promised this, and Moldova.
“When talking about Ukraine, don’t forget about Moldova. If Ukraine joins, we cannot exclude Moldova from this. So it’s not just about Ukraine anymore. We are talking about perhaps the largest unifying expansion, but probably under different rules,” Rinkēvičs explained.
In his opinion, it will then be necessary to return to a very serious discussion of what the entire structure of European Union decision-making will look like.
The Latvian president also stressed that the date of Ukraine’s possible accession to the EU, whether we like it or not, is now very much linked to a peace agreement with Russia — will there be a peace agreement or not?
“To be honest, I don’t see Russia being ready for an agreement. And if Russia doesn’t move, we won’t have an agreement,” he explained.
According to Rinkevics, Zelensky’s appeal to set a date for accession should be heard at a meeting of the European Council.
