Russia-Ukraine war live: Zelenskiy set to meet key Nato leaders as Russia strikes Kyiv for second night in a row | Ukraine #RussiaUkraine #war #live #Zelenskiy #set #meet #key #Nato #leaders #Russia #strikes #Kyiv #night #row #Ukraine

Zelenskiy will hold a series of bilateral meetings with Nato leaders today, after they declared his country’s future lay inside the alliance but rebuffed his call for a timeline to membership.

Zelenskiy will join the Nato leaders on the second day of their summit in Vilnius for an inaugural session of the Nato-Ukraine Council, a body established to upgrade relations between Kyiv and the 31-member transatlantic military alliance.

He will also meet separately with US President Joe Biden as he seeks more arms and ammunition from the United States and other Nato nations to fight the war triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany are expected to issue assurances to Kyiv of long-term security support in the form of advanced weaponry, training and other military aid, possibly soon after the summit ends, according to officials.

Welcome back to our live coverage of the war in Ukraine with me, Helen Sullivan.

Russia launched a wave of kamikaze drone attacks on Kyiv and its region for a second night in row, Ukraine’s military said on Wednesday, hours before president Volodymyr Zelenskiy was due to hold bilateral meetings today with the leaders of America, Canada, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Japan and other partners.

The meeting at the Nato summit in Vilnius comes after Zelenskiy failed in a last-ditch effort to secure an invitation for Ukraine to join Nato. Nato has said in an ascension plan that “Ukraine’s future” is in the alliance and the country will join when “allies agree and conditions are met”.

The decision not to issue an invitation or provide a firm timeline prompted Zelenskiy to say he has “faith” but not confidence in the alliance’s decisions.

In other key developments:

• Germany found traces of subsea explosives in samples taken from a yacht that it suspects “may have been used to transport the explosives” to blow up the Nord Stream gas pipelines, it told the UN security council in a letter with Sweden and Denmark. A series of unexplained explosions hit the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines connecting Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea last September in the exclusive economic zones of Germany, Sweden and Denmark.

• A senior Russian draft officer and former submarine commander accused by Ukraine of deadly strikes on its territory has been shot dead while jogging in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar. Stanislav Rzhitsky, 42, was killed on Monday by an unidentified gunman during a morning run in a park, police said. Russian FSB security services said on Tuesday that a 64-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of carrying out the attack.

• A woman was killed by Russian shelling in the village of Sofiyivka in the Kherson region, the governor said on Telegram. Oleksandr Prokudin also claimed residential quarters in the region had been set on fire by “Russian terrorists” and left two people injured, one of whom was in serious condition.

• The British government said on Tuesday it would provide a £‎50m ($64.65m) support package for equipment repair and establishment of a military rehabilitation centre in Ukraine. Under the new tranche of support, which will be discussed at this week’s Nato summit in Vilnius, Luthuania, the UK and G7 members will provide thousands of additional rounds of Challenger 2 ammunition and more than 70 combat and logistics vehicles.

• France will start supplying Ukraine with long-range Scalp missiles that will allow Kyiv’s forces to defend themselves, President Emmanuel Macron has said. “I have decided to increase deliveries of weapons and equipment to enable the Ukrainians to have the capacity to strike deeply while keeping our doctrine to allow Ukraine to defend its territory,” he said on Tuesday.

• Nato says it has not seen a change in Russia’s nuclear posture despite its announcement that it is stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus. However, alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg cautioned that “the nuclear rhetoric of Russia is reckless and dangerous” and that Nato allies were closely monitoring what Russia was doing. “So far we haven’t seen any changes in the Russian nuclear deployment posture that requires a change from us, but we will remain vigilant,” he said.