Trump hesitant about giving Tomahawks to Ukraine, saying ‘hopefully they won’t need it’ – live | Europe

Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events:

• Trump showed hesitance on supplying Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. He said: “One of the reasons we want to get this war over is…that it’s not easy for us to give you … massive numbers of very powerful weapons … Hopefully they won’t need it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over with without thinking about Tomahawks.”

• Zelenskyy emphasized Nato and security guarantees as part of any peace deal with Russia. “First of all, I think we need to sit and speak. The second point, we need ceasefire… We are ready to speak in any kind of format,” he said, adding: “Nato, for Ukrainians, is very important… But the most important thing…for people in Ukraine, which are under each day’s attacks, to have really strong security guarantees.”

• Trump said that Melania Trump’s push to help return displaced Ukrainian children in the war was her own decision. “She wanted to do it. She just felt very strongly about the children. And she’s done a really good job,” Trump said. Last week, the first lady announced the return of the children followed an “open channel of communication” she had with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

• Trump called himself the “mediator president,” adding: “I love solving wars.” Talking about his mediating efforts around the world, he said: “This is number nine. Okay, this will be number nine for me. I’ve solved eight, including the Middle East… I didn’t get a Nobel Prize…so I don’t care about all that stuff. I just care about saving lives. But this will be number nine.”

• Zelenksyy said that he believes Trump has a “big chance to finish this war.” Speaking to reporters, Zelenskyy added: “President Trump really showed for the world that he can manage [a] ceasefire in [the] Middle East and that’s why I hope that he will do this and we will hve a big success for Ukraine… I hope that President Trump can manage it.”

• Trump also said that there is a lot of “bad blood” between Zelenskyyy and Putin. ‘These two leaders do not like each other, and we want to make it comfortable for everybody. So one way or the other we’ll be involved in threes, but it may be separated,” Trump said.

• Hungary’s government has made clear it will not arrest Vladimir Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, if he arrives in Budapest for peace talks. Speaking to state radio on Friday, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán hailed the fact his country would host the meeting.

• The US is supportive of a new IMF lending programme for Ukraine and the European Union initiative to extend a loan to Kyiv based on Russian central bank assets immobilised in the west, European economic commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said on Friday. Dombrovskis, who is in charge of the 27-nation EU’s economic policy, met with US treasury secretary Scott Bessent on Thursday to discuss support for Ukraine.

• Russia and the United States should build a ‘Putin-Trump’ rail tunnel under the Bering Strait to link their countries, unlock joint exploration of natural resources and “symbolise unity”, a Kremlin envoy has suggested. The proposal by Kirill Dmitriev, President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and head of Russia’s RDIF sovereign wealth fund, envisages a construction project costing $8 billion, funded by Moscow and “international partners”, to build a 70 mile (112 km) rail and cargo link in under eight years.

• Fifteen members of a Ukrainian militia group were convicted by a Russian military court on Friday of taking part in “a terrorist organisation” and sentenced to between 15 and 21 years in a maximum security penal colony, Russia’s prosecutor general said. The men were members of Ukraine’s Aidar Battalion who were captured in 2022.