Hello and welcome to NewsAfer on the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. And coming up a little later, we will have more on that developing story out of Munich. A car's been driven into a crowd, injuring nearly 30 people. Some seriously will go live to Germany in less than 15 minutes.

But we are going to start with what looks like a major shake-up of the Transatlantic Alliance

established in the wake of the Second World War.

A shake-up that's left European countries reeling today and scrambling to work out how to respond. And it all turns on President

Trump's announcement on Wednesday that negotiations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine had already

begun with a long phone call to Vladimir Putin and that neither Ukraine nor America's European

allies would have a place at the table. Speaking in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he hoped to end the war as soon as possible.

I think we're on the way to getting peace.

I think President Putin wants peace and President Zelenskyy wants peace, and I want peace.

I just want to see people stop getting killed.

We're very far away from that particular war, but that's a vicious war,

probably a million and a half soldiers killed in a short period of time.

I've never seen anything. I have pictures that are, you wouldn't believe it,

and it would be nice to end it immediately.

The bilateral approach to negotiations with Russia has drawn an angry response

from European leaders. Six countries put out a statement last night saying that Europe and

Ukraine must be included in talks. The German government also accused the Trump administration

of giving ground on things like territory and NATO membership before negotiations

had properly begun. Here's Britain's Defence Secretary John Healy, speaking ahead of a meeting of

NATO defence ministers in Brussels. My message in these discussions will be that there can be no

negotiation about Ukraine without Ukraine,

and Ukraine's voice must be at the heart of any talks.

...