Russia-Ukraine war updates: EU leaders hold talks to boost military budgets

You can catch up on all the latest events related to the conflict here.

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This live page will soon be closed. Here are some of today’s top news lines:

• European Union leaders have been holding emergency talks in Brussels, seeking a unified response to Ukraine’s strategy.
• Poland and Baltic nations have welcomed the French president’s proposal to launch talks about using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect Europe from Russian threats.
• Ukraine’s defence minister said Kyiv is looking for ways to fill the gap amid a pause in US intelligence sharing.
• The Kremlin has again said US views on the war align with Russia, responding to Secretary of State Rubio’s statement that the war in Ukraine is “a proxy war between nuclear powers … and it needs to come to an end”.

The announcement yesterday has sent Ukrainian officials reeling, with Defence Minister Rustem Umerov saying they are still ascertaining the implications of the pause, and also searching for alternatives.

Ukrainian military officials have told Al Jazeera they have already felt the effect of missing out on US satellite and other sources of intelligence along the war’s eastern front line.

European nations could potentially fill some of the gaps, but it remains unclear if their spy satellites are attuned to providing the kind of intelligence that Ukraine needs.

Read our explainer about how we got to this point – and what the implications are – here.

De Wever reiterates support for Ukraine, stressing that Kyiv and Europe must be involved in any talks about the conflict.

“We cannot accept that decisions about Ukraine’s future and Europe’s security are made without Ukraine and its European allies,” he wrote in a social media post.

Today I assured @ZelenskyyUa that we will continue to support Ukraine. We cannot accept that decisions about Ukraine's future and Europe's security are made without Ukraine and its European allies. 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/T7JRI7K0aO

— Bart De Wever (@Bart_DeWever) March 6, 2025

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig says it is concerning for Zelenskyy that the Trump administration is opening channels with Ukrainian opposition leaders.

“This will be alarming for President Zelenskyy’s administration,” Baig said. “As those relationships with the Trump administration sour, Trump officials seem to be looking to other people within Ukraine to talk to.”

Earlier, former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, an opposition leader, appeared to confirm talks with US officials, but he dismissed the idea of a wartime election to replace Zelenskyy.

Scandinavian consumers outraged by Trump’s Ukraine policy turnaround have begun boycotting goods and services “Made in USA” but are discovering just how difficult that can be at times.

Several groups have emerged in recent days on social networks in Denmark and Sweden aimed at helping fellow consumers make alternate choices.

The Danish group “Boykot varer fra USA” and the Swedish group “Bojkotta varor fran USA” each had some 63,000 members on Thursday.

“It is of course very difficult to boycott US products consistently, quickly and long-term, but if you want to do something and don’t know where to begin, this could provide a little help,” Agneta Gottberg Henriksson, 58, wrote on the Swedish Facebook group, attaching a list of US products that has been circulating online.

The list features a column on the left listing well-known American brands, while a column on the right suggests Swedish or European alternative options.

US envoy to Ukraine Keith Kellogg has called the conflict in Ukraine “Russia’s war”, but he says Trump is prioritising US interests and working to end the fighting.

Kellogg said the previous US administration’s approach of providing Ukraine with military support for “as long as it takes” is a “bumper sticker”, not a real strategy.

The envoy noted that the US has spent billions of dollars on aid to Kyiv already.

“President Trump has elevated the United States priority as bringing peace to both sides, rather than framing this war as one side winning over the other – an approach that would only serve to drag America into an endless proxy war to the detriment of our own national security interests,” Kellogg said.

Ukraine’s defence minister, Rustem Umerov, has also been seeking to shore up support from allies amid the pause in US aid and intelligence sharing.

Earlier today, he met the Polish minister of national defence, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, saying in a post on X, “Poland will continue to ensure the logistics of weapons and ammunition deliveries for our defense through its territory.”

He also met the German defence minister, Boris Pistorious, saying during a joint news conference in Berlin that Ukrainian officials were still ascertaining the implications of the US intelligence pause.

“We did not get the detail yet on how it will be restricted, but we already working for the alternatives,” he said.

🇩🇪🤝🇺🇦

German Defence Minister Pistorius is meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart @rustem_umerov in Berlin today. #StandWithUkraine pic.twitter.com/ku9gwNNtpE

— German Embassy London (@GermanEmbassy) March 6, 2025

Amid the EU summit in Brussel, Ursula von der Leyen says the bloc is reiterating its backing of the Ukrainian president and “a just, lasting peace for Ukraine”.

Von der Leyen also talked up a proposal to beef up Europe’s military spending with hundreds of billions of dollars.

“With our ReArm Europe plan, we will speed up delivery of the weapons and ammunition for Ukraine,” she wrote in a social media post. “We’re making our entire continent safer.”

Today, we reaffirm our support for you, President @ZelenskyyUa, and a just, lasting peace for Ukraine.

With our ReArm Europe plan, we will speed up delivery of the weapons and ammunition for Ukraine.

We’re making our entire continent safer. pic.twitter.com/dKLMuIlBOQ

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) March 6, 2025

The European Council will ask the European Commission, Slovakia and Ukraine to intensify efforts towards “finding workable solutions to the gas transit issue”, including through resumption, according to draft conclusions seen by Reuters news agency.

Before today’s extraordinary summit, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has also rejected military aid to Ukraine, said that he wanted a mention of reopening Russian gas transit through Ukraine – a major route of energy for Slovakia which Kyiv stopped this year – as part of summit conclusions.

Poland and the Baltic nations have welcomed a proposal by Macron to launch talks about using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect the continent from Russian threats, a move Moscow quickly has dismissed as “extremely confrontational”.

On Wednesday, Macron said he has decided to open a “strategic debate” on using France’s nuclear deterrent to protect its European allies amid concerns over potential US disengagement. The French president described Moscow as a “threat to France and Europe” in a televised address to the nation.

France is the only nuclear power in the European Union.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Macron’s speech was “extremely confrontational”.

“One can conclude that France thinks more about war, about continuing the war,” he said during a regular call with journalists.

The Baltic country, which borders the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad and close Russian ally Belarus, has withdrawn from the agreement not to use missiles and bombs that burst in the air, indiscriminately scattering smaller explosives.

Speaking on Lithuanian radio, Dovile Sakaliene, said the withdrawal was meant to send a “strategic message” that Lithuania was prepared to “use absolutely everything” if necessary.

More than 120 countries have signed the convention, which prohibits the acquisition, use and production of the weapons. However, Lithuania, which joined the agreement in 2008, has noted that no countries bordering Russia have joined.

The top US diplomat has caused a stir when he described the conflict in Ukraine as a “proxy war” between the US and Russia.

Here’s what Rubio told Fox News:

“Frankly, it’s a proxy war between nuclear powers – the United States, helping Ukraine, and Russia – and it needs to come to an end. … The plan of the Ukrainians up to now and their allies on Capitol Hill and the people you talk to in other countries is, ‘Let’s just keep giving them as much as they need for as long as it takes.’ That’s not a strategy.

“On the Russian side, obviously, they struggled early on in this conflict. They’re a bigger country. They’ve made some progress.  But by no means are the Russians running away with it either. So it’s a stalemated conflict. … All the president [Trump] is trying to do here is figure out if there’s a path towards peace. We have to engage both sides – the Russians and the Ukrainians. And we asked the Ukrainians not to sabotage it.”

Here are the latest events:

• Outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz again rejects any “dictated peace” in Ukraine as several European countries pledge more weapons for Ukraine during a summit in Brussels.
• Ukrainian opposition leaders reject the notion of holding wartime elections after media reports of contacts with Trump officials.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says any European peacekeeping force sent to Ukraine would be regarded as the official involvement of NATO in the war.
• The Kremlin also condemns French President Emmanuel Macron’s warning on Wednesday of what he calls Russia’s threat to Europe and the need for unity.
• The Reuters news agency reports that Trump is planning to revoke the legal status for Ukrainian refugees who have fled to the US.

British officials held talks on Wednesday with about 20 countries, mostly European and Commonwealth parties, interested in contributing to a so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ to support Ukraine, Reuters news agency quoted a UK official as saying.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced on Sunday that the UK, France and some other nations would form a coalition to draw up plans to offer Ukraine support in the event of a peace deal to end Russia’s war.

The official would not be drawn on which other countries had shown an interest in offering support, but said, “It shows the willingness of the coalition of the willing to convene and the desire of a number of different countries to play their part.”

“This is still early stages and the situation is very fluid.”

Despite Trump’s overtures to Moscow, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov says the US “is not a country that is friendly to us at this point”.

“However, we are currently working to revive and restore bilateral relations,” Peskov told reporters, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

Slovenia will have to increase defence spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 from the current 1.53 percent, Prime Minister Robert Golob has told reporters at the summit in Brussels.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic also stated that his country would allocate 2 percent of its GDP to defence.