Rubio to meet Zelenskyy in Munich

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said he will have a chance to meet Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at this week's Munich Security Conference, Report informs via The Guardian.

A year after the vice-president, JD Vance, stunned assembled dignitaries with a verbal assault on many of the US's closest allies in Europe, Rubio plans to take a less contentious but philosophically similar approach when he addresses the annual gathering on Saturday, US officials say.

Before departing for Germany on Thursday evening, Rubio used reassuring words as he described Europe as important for Americans.

"We're very tightly linked together with Europe," he told reporters. But he also made clear it wouldn't be business as usual, saying: "We live in a new era in geopolitics, and it's going to require all of us to reexamine what that looks like."

The Pentagon's policy chief, Elbridge Colby, told European Nato defence ministers in Brussels that they needed to step up their combat capabilities and take the lead in protecting their continent from the Russian threat.