Amira Barkhush

Before the NATO Summit began, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy outlined a simple goal: leave Ankara with stronger air defenses, new defense industry partnerships, and concrete security commitments for Ukraine. Two days later, how much of that did Ukraine actually achieve?

For more than two centuries, Sweden remained militarily non-aligned. Russia’s aggression changed that almost overnight. Today, Sweden is one of Kyiv’s largest military backers, has joined NATO , and is even adapting its own armed forces based on lessons learned from Ukraine’s battlefield.

The 35th meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group concluded on June 18th, with allies announcing more than $4 billion in new military assistance for Ukraine. This underscores continued international support for the country, as Russia intensifies its missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities.

Just a few years ago, Ukrainian soldiers arrived at  NATO training grounds as students. Today, they’ve returned as instructors. In Sweden’s Exercise Aurora 26, Ukrainian drone operators shared their drone expertise forged through more than four years of existential war.

In a rare dyadic interview with UNITED24 Media, Germany’s Minister of Defense, Boris Pistorius, and Ukraine's Defense Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, shared their insights on defense cooperation between the two nations. 

Following the retreat of Russian forces from the Kyiv region in the spring of 2022, a lethal legacy remained: thousands of landmines and unexploded ordnance buried in the soil. The Duke of Sussex, Prince Harry, visited one of the demining efforts in the region to draw attention to this humanitarian challenge.