Ukraine-Russia war latest: Zelensky plans to meet Trump at Nato summit

Ukraine will get 100 drone-detecting radars and 20 medical evacuation vehicles in a new €175 million (£149 million) aid package from the Netherlands.

Dutch Defence Minister Ruben Brekelmans said ahead of a Nato summit in The Hague that the new aid agreement follows a €500 million deal to produce 600,000 drones with the Ukrainian defence industry.

Delivery of the radars, which will help identify incoming drones and relay data to air defence systems, is expected to be completed by year-end.

In a statement on Friday, the Dutch Defence Ministry specified that €80 million of the package will go towards drone support through the international drone coalition.

The Netherlands has pledged about €10 billion in military support for Ukraine since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion in early 2022.

Donald Trump is heading to The Hague to meet with his Nato counterparts today, for a summit that could either unite the security organisation over a new defence spending pledge or widen divisions between the 32 allies.

Just a week ago, things had seemed rosy. Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte was optimistic that European members and Canada would commit to investing at least as much of their economic growth on defence as the US does for the first time.

Then Spain rejected the new Nato target for each country to spend 5 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence needs, calling it “unreasonable.” Trump also insists on that figure. The alliance operates on a consensus that requires the backing of all 32 members.

The following day, Trump said the US should not have to respect the goal.

“I don’t think we should, but I think they should,” he said.

The summit begins with an informal dinner today and one working session on Wednesday. Already, a very short summit statement has been drafted to ensure the meeting is not derailed by fights over details and wording.

Volodymyr Zelensky plans to meet with US president Donald Trump during this week’s Nato summit.

Zelensky said during a Sky News interview aired on Tuesday that their teams were working on organisational details and the timing of the meeting.

The Ukrainian president said his plan was to meet with Trump on the sidelines of the event in The Hague.

Volodymyr Zelensky said preliminary data indicated that Russian forces used North Korean missiles in the Kyiv strike yesterday that killed at least nine people.

Blaming Russia’s ammunition suppliers, Mr Zelensky described Russia, North Korea and Iran, which has provided drones to Russia to attack Ukraine, as a “coalition of murderers”.

“The strike damaged sites in four regions. In total, 352 drones were launched, including 159 Shaheds just overnight, along with 16 missiles. Preliminary reports indicate that ballistic weapons from North Korea were also used,” he wrote on X.

“A large number of drones and missiles were shot down by our air defenders — but not all. And everyone in countries neighbouring Russia, Iran, and North Korea should be thinking carefully about whether they could protect lives if this coalition of murderers persists and continues spreading their terror,” Mr Zelensky said.

A Russian drone attack on a village in the Sumy area overnight killed an 8-year-old boy and two adults and injured another three people, the military administration of the region in northeast Ukraine said early today.

“The strike took the lives of people from different families,” the administration said its Telegram channel.

“They all lived on the same street. They went to sleep in their homes. But Russian drones interrupted their sleep – forever,” it said.

The full scale of the overnight attack on the region is not immediately clear.

Ukrainian security services have revealed details of assassination attempts on Volodymyr Zelensky, according to local reports.

In one of the alleged attempts, two colonels who were supposed to be protecting the Ukrainian president were in fact working for the Russian FSB and plotting to assassinate him last year, said Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), according to Kyiv Post.

The other alleged attempt was planned with a retired Polish military officer, Ukrainian National News reported.

The pensioner was a former Soviet Union recruit who had recently been reactivated as a “sleeper agent” to assassinate Mr Zelensky at Rzeszów Airport in Poland, according to the newspaper.

Ukraine will remain a vital topic at the Nato summit in The Hague today despite president Volodymyr Zelensky’s absence from a leaders’ meeting aiming to seal an agreement to boost military spending, Nato chief Mark Rutte has said.

“You will see important language about Ukraine, including connecting the defence spending up to 2035 to Ukraine, and the need for Ukraine to stay in the fight,” Mr Rutte told reporters on the eve of the two-day summit.

“This is a clear commitment by allies,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader hasn’t yet publicly confirmed if he’ll attend a dinner laid on for leaders attending the Nato summit, where his country has had a diplomatic downgrade from previous alliance meetings, even as leaders stress that their militaries need to muscle up to counter the threat of Russia.

There are other meetings scheduled for Mr Zelensky at the summit, but the doors remain shut to the leaders’ working meeting on Wednesday, even as Nato’s secretary general acknowledged how heavily the war weighs on the leaders.

“Of course, the most significant and direct threat facing this alliance remains the Russian Federation,” he said. “Moscow continues to wage war against Ukraine with the support of North Korea, Iran and China, as well as Belarus,” Mr Rutte said.

He also stressed that the alliance is underwriting Ukraine’s defence to the tune of billions of euros.

European allies and Canada “will provide over €35bn of additional security assistance to Ukraine for the year ahead,” he said.

“So in a couple of months, we went from €20bn to €35bn. And I think that is great news,” Mr Rutte said.