Russia Kills Nine in Kyiv Strike on Eve of NATO Summit. Trump Scheduled to Arrive in Turkey Tuesday to Demand Ceasefire Progress.

Russian ballistic missiles struck multiple apartment blocks across Kyiv overnight, killing at least nine people and wounding 46, including at least five children, according to BBC News. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko confirmed fires broke out in several apartment complexes. Rescue crews were still combing rubble Monday morning.

Zelensky had warned the attack was coming. He posted on X Sunday, hours before the missiles arrived, that intelligence indicated a second wave of strikes was imminent following Thursday's barrage, which killed 30 people. That earlier attack was described by BBC News as among the most deadly on Kyiv in months. Russia has said its strikes target military and energy infrastructure in response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian power facilities.

Kyiv's top military administrator, Timur Tkachenko, confirmed the casualty figures. Power was temporarily cut in Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea overnight as well, according to BBC News, suggesting Ukrainian strikes on the peninsula continued in parallel.

What's on the Table in Ankara

Trump is scheduled to arrive at the NATO summit in Turkey on Tuesday. His first bilateral is with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the summit host. On Wednesday, he is scheduled to meet Zelensky, followed by a follow-up call with Putin, according to a senior U.S. official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, as reported by the Jerusalem Post. Both Putin and Zelensky spoke by phone with Trump on Saturday in calls to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence, according to the Inquirer.

The official's framing was unambiguous: "The battlefield has clearly frozen over the last couple of months, and neither side is making a lot of progress. The president feels a real sense of urgency to try to bring this to a stop."

Trump will also meet Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Wednesday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly confirmed, as reported by the Inquirer's Global Nation desk. Al-Sharaa's inclusion follows Trump's repeated public suggestions that Syria could play a military role in Lebanon, though al-Sharaa denied any such intent in June, saying he was pursuing "economic channels between Lebanon and Syria, not military ones."

The Loyalty Problem

The burden-sharing argument that defined Trump's first-term NATO fights has evolved into something harder to resolve with a spreadsheet. At last year's summit, allies committed to matching U.S. defense spending as a share of GDP, a significant concession Trump had demanded for years. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte followed up last month with an Oval Office presentation labeled "The Trump Trillion," showing $1.2 trillion in European and Canadian spending since 2017, according to PBS.

Trump was unimpressed. He said he was disappointed that NATO allies refused to join the Iran war, which he launched alongside Israel without consulting them, and stated flatly: "We don't need their money — we don't need anything. I just want loyalty."

Rutte has spent nearly two years managing Trump with what PBS described as "outright flattery," including comparing Trump to a "daddy" — a characterization that drew significant criticism. The approach has kept the U.S. inside the alliance, but the goalposts have shifted from dollars to deference.

The Strongest Counter-Argument

Critics of Trump's pressure campaign on NATO argue that demanding ideological loyalty, specifically participation in the Iran conflict, crosses a line from burden-sharing into compelling allies to join wars they had no role in starting and no vote on. Several European members have their own domestic political constraints, treaty obligations, and legal frameworks that make joining an undeclared war legally and constitutionally difficult. From that view, Trump conflating spending commitments with war participation changes the foundational nature of the alliance from collective defense to coalition loyalty.

The counterpoint: NATO's Article 5 mutual defense commitment has always required members to actually show up when it counts. If allies collect the security umbrella without contributing when the U.S. goes to the mat, the arrangement is asymmetric in ways that no dollar figure fully addresses.

Zelensky's Ask Before He Lands

Ahead of his Wednesday meeting with Trump, Zelensky has made his priority public. He urged allies on X not to delay delivery of long-range missiles for air defense, writing: "Any delay with missiles for our air defense... means the loss of lives, and it encourages Russia to continue the war." He has also specifically asked the U.S. to grant Ukraine licenses to manufacture Patriot air defense missiles domestically, according to BBC News.

The White House has been skeptical of open-ended weapons commitments. Whether the overnight strikes, timed precisely on the eve of the summit, change Trump's calculus or harden his push for a quick ceasefire framework remains unclear.

The Wednesday Trump-Zelensky meeting in Ankara will be their first face-to-face since the G7 summit in France in June, according to the Inquirer. Their last Oval Office encounter, in February 2025, ended in a public argument in which Trump told Zelensky he lacked the "cards" to win the war.