Hello and welcome to NewsHour, live on the BBC World Service, coming to you from London.

I'm Krupa Bhardi, and it's very good to have you with us.

We begin in Germany, where talks are continuing at the annual Munich Security Conference.

This is where world leaders gather to debate the most pressing

challenges to international security. And much focus has been on how to end the war in Ukraine.

The meeting happens in the shadow of that phone call just a few days ago between President Trump

and the Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the leaders agreed to begin negotiations to end the war.

Mr. Trump had said the U.S., Russian and Ukrainian officials would meet in Munich, but that has not happened.

There have instead been lots of questions about where Ukraine fits into these conversations.

President Zelensky took to the podium this morning

and said that Europe should step up and create its own military.

Let's be honest, now we can't throughout the possibility

that America might say no to Europe on issues that threaten it.

Many leaders have talked about Europe that needs its own military,

an army, an army of Europe. And I really, I really believe that time has come, the armed forces of Europe

must be created.

The EU's foreign policy chief, Kayakales, has told the BBC the bloc didn't need a separate army as an alternative to NATO.

We have armed forces in Europe. We have 27 different armies and these armies are

interoperable and are working together. Some of them in NATO, 23 of them in NATO, but also four

in addition. So we don't need a European army. We need the 27 armies to work together perfectly.

I've also been getting the view from Latvia, the country that shares a border with Russia.

Latvian defence minister Andres Prudz gave me his take on development,

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