Hello and welcome to News Hour from the BBC World Service.

We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez and we are going to start today

in Washington, D.C. where leaders from the 32 members of NATO are gathering for this week's summit.

It is to mark the Transatlantic Alliance's 75th anniversary,

but the focus will really be on the present and future rather than the past.

The present been the war in Ukraine and whether NATO is willing to equip Kyve with the missile

defences to prevent attacks such as the ones we saw on Monday

in which the country's main children's hospital was hit. The future is where the

Ukraine should be admitted into the club. Membership seems to be off the whether the

leadership seems to be off the cards right now.

And there's another pressing issue at play

whether the leader of NATO's most powerful member,

the United States, will stand for re-election against Donald Trump.

President Biden will be under intense scrutiny over the next few days.

Well in a moment we'll talk to the foreign minister of Ukraine's neighbor Poland.

First let's hear from our State Department correspondent Tom Bateman, who's in Washington.

Well I'm standing next to the blast barriers and the iron security fencing and

security cameras of the Russian embassy here in Washington DC. Definitely not

invited to the NATO summit, but we've come here because of what's on the other side of the

street and from all four homes facing the Russian embassy they're hanging Ukrainian flags.

Hello? Oh, hi, sorry to body you. I'm from BBC. You're literally opposite the gates of the Russian embassy here.

You got your two Ukrainian flags on the porch, a bear holding a sign saying Putin is unbearable.

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