Ukraine-Russia war latest: ‘Assassination attempts’ on Zelensky revealed

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.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky met King Charles yesterday during a short visit to the UK ahead of the Nato summit today.

Mr Zelensky met King Charles at Windsor Castle where the two sat down for lunch ahead of political meetings later in the day.

The two shook hands for cameras on what was their third meeting this year and the latest gesture of the King and Britain’s support for Ukraine.

The visit comes a day before Nato leaders are due to gather for a two-day summit in The Hague that could either unite the world’s biggest security organisation around a new defence spending pledge or widen divisions among the 32 allies.

European allies and Canada also want Ukraine to be at the top of the summit agenda, but they are wary that US president Donald Trump might not want Mr Zelensky to steal the limelight.

Russia’s air defence units destroyed 20 Ukrainian drones overnight, including two over the Moscow region, the Russian defence ministry said this morning.

Earlier, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that Russian air defences had downed two Ukrainian drones heading for the city overnight.

A Ukrainian drone also struck a multi-storey apartment building outside Moscow in the early hours today, triggering a fire and injuring two people, local officials said.