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Morning opening: Ukraine Defence Contact Group
Jakub Krupa
A group of 57 countries, including all members of Nato, helping Ukraine meets today in Brussels for the latest round of coordination of how to best help Kyiv in its continuing fight against the Russian invasion.
The meeting comes a day after Ukraine detonated a massive underwater blast that “severely damaged” the base of pylons holding up the illegally built Kerch Bridge, which connects the Russian-occupied Crimean peninsula of Ukraine to Russia. The signature project of Vladimir Putin was hit with the equivalent of more than a metric tonne of TNT, said Kyiv’s SBU security service, write Peter Beaumont and Artem Mazhulin.
But, as Reuters noted, in a sign of how far the US has moved in recent months under Donald Trump, officials said US defense secretary Pete Hegseth won’t even attend the the Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting today – even though he is still coming for a Nato ministerial tomorrow.
The focus then shifts to Nato and major European allies, including Germany and the UK. I will keep an eye on this and bring you the key lines from their press conferences this afternoon.
I will also bring you key updates from the developing situation in the German city of Cologne, which sees the largest evacuation since the end of the second world war as it deals with the discovery of three wartime bombs in the city centre, and updates on government crises in the Netherlands and Poland.
Let’s see what the day brings us.
It’s Wednesday, 4 June 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
Good morning.
