EU leaders are gathering for an emergency summit in Brussels focused on ways to beef up the continent’s defence capabilities and how best to support Ukraine — both militarily and diplomatically.

US President Donald Trump’s moves to open bilateral peace negotiations with Russia, his threats to end US security protection to European allies who fail to spend more on defence and his dramatically soured relationship with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy have turned generations of US-European relations on their head and plunged EU leaders into crisis.

Joined by Zelenskyy for talks in Brussels, the EU’s 27 national leaders will aim to give political backing to a raft of new proposals from the European Commission aimed at facilitating a surge in defence spending — a push given huge impetus this week by incoming German chancellor Friedrich Merz’s move to end Berlin’s historic fiscal constraints.

Agreement on support to Ukraine, however, is likely to be difficult given the stance of Hungary’s leader Viktor Orbán, who has seized on Trump’s stance towards Kyiv to demand the EU reassess more than three years of support to Ukraine and instead push for immediate peace talks.

The summit follows a fortnight of frantic shuttle diplomacy between Washington, London and Paris by Europe’s most senior leaders, in an attempt to both devise a European “peace plan” potentially involving troops on the ground in Ukraine, and keep Trump engaged in supporting Ukraine and protecting Europe.