Ukraine will present a revised peace plan to the Trump administration on Tuesday, as Volodymyr Zelensky looks to resist US pressure into ceding territory to Russia.

For weeks, Kyiv has been aiming to balance out a US-backed draft peace plan which was viewed widely in Europe as a capitulation to Moscow.

A busy start to the diplomatic week saw the Ukrainian president head to London on Monday, where he met Sir Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz, before heading to Brussels in the evening to meet Nato secretary general Mark Rutte, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council chief Antonia Costa.

After talks between the US and Ukraine over the weekend, a revised 20-point plan was proposed - but there was still no agreement on giving up territory, Zelensky said.

Russia’s Defence Ministry has claimed that air defences downed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 22 fired at occupied Crimea.

Moscow does not typically reveal the full number of enemy drones in its skies overnight, so the figure is likely higher.

A total of 49 drones were downed in the Belgorod region, it said. Smaller amounts were downed in other areas including the Ryazan, Voronezh, Rostov regions, the defence ministry said according to Ukrainska Pravda.

Britain and Europe must urgently unite to fight back against escalating attacks by Russia and other hostile states, Yvette Cooper is set to warn on Tuesday in a major speech.

Ms Cooper will tell an audience of diplomats that there is an “escalating” danger to the UK and Europe, adding: “Across Europe we are witnessing an escalation in hybrid threats – from physical through to cyber – designed to weaken critical national infrastructure, undermine our interests and interfere in our democracies all for the advantage of malign foreign states.

Lithuania declared a state of emergency due to threats to public safety from smuggled balloons originating in Belarus, the government said this morning.

Lithuania accuses Belarus of allowing smugglers to use weather balloons to transport contraband cigarettes across the border, repeatedly forcing Vilnius airport to halt operations, disrupting air traffic.

The duration of the emergency measures was not immediately clear.

Belarus, which allowed its territory to be used for Russia's invasion in 2022 of Ukraine, has denied responsibility for the balloons and accused Lithuania of provocations, including allegedly sending a drone to drop "extremist material".

Lithuania, a Nato and European Union member which was once part of the Soviet Union, has rejected those accusations as false.

Russia's top general claims his forces are advancing along the entire front in Ukraine and have taken more than 30 per cent of the buildings in the eastern town of Myrnohrad.

Moscow regularly claims battlefield successes that are then refuted by Ukraine, and Kyiv has yet to comment on the update by Russian general Valery Gerasimov.

Gerasimov's comments identified Myrnohrad, a town with a pre-war population of some 46,000 people to the east of Pokrovsk, as a key target for Vladimir Putin.

Russia, which uses the Soviet-era name of Krasnoarmeysk to refer to neighbouring Pokrovsk, says it has taken the whole of the city and claims to have also encircled Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad, which Russians call Dimitrov.

Ukraine has repeatedly denied Russian claims that Pokrovsk has fallen and says it forces still hold part of the city and are fighting back in Myrnohrad.

Russia currently controls 19.2 per cent of Ukraine, including Crimea, which it annexed in 2014, Luhansk, more than 80 per cent of Donetsk, about 75 per cent of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and slivers of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Ukraine says it is holding its defensive lines and forcing Russia to pay a high price for what it says are relatively modest gains.

Putin said last week that Russia would take full control of Ukraine's Donbas region by force unless Ukrainian forces withdraw, something Kyiv has flatly rejected.

Russia's defence ministry on Tuesday said air defence systems intercepted and destroyed 121 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Moscow typically only reports on the number of drones it downs – it does not provides tallies for the total fired or those that hit their targets.

A military court in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine has sentenced four Russian soldiers to jail for the killing of Russell Bonner Bentley III, an American-born pro-Kremlin fighter and propagandist who lived for a decade in the occupied Donbas, reported the New York Times.

The Donetsk Garrison Military Court found that Maj Vitaly Vansyatsky, Lt Andrei Iordanov and Sgt Vladislav Agaltsev abducted Bentley in April 2024 after encountering him filming the aftermath of an artillery strike in Donetsk.

Investigators said the men suspected him of being an American saboteur, ignored his claim that he worked for Russia’s state-run Sputnik agency, and took him to a command post where he was beaten and tortured to death.

His body was later blown up and burnt in an attempt to disguise the murder. The major and the lieutenant each received 12-year sentences, while Agaltsev was jailed for 11 years.

All three were stripped of their ranks. A fourth soldier was given 18 months for helping cover up the crime, according to the reports.

The court also awarded more than $65,000 in damages to Bentley’s widow, Lyudmila Bentley.

Bentley, 64, a self-described Communist from Round Rock, Texas, moved to the region in 2014 and fought with Russia’s Vostok Battalion before becoming a prolific online advocate for Moscow.

Known as the “Donbas Cowboy,” he frequently declared: “I hate Nazis.”

A top European Union official on Monday warned the United States against interfering in Europe's affairs and said only European citizens can decide which parties should govern them.

European Council president Antonio Costa's remarks came in reaction to the Trump administration's new national security strategy, which was published on Friday and paints European allies as weak, while offering tacit support to far-right political parties.

The document, which was praised by Russia, formalises in writing months of Trump administration criticism of EU policy and perceived restrictions on free speech that started with a lecture to European allies in Germany in February by US vice president JD Vance.

It's "good" that the strategy depicts European countries as an ally, but "allies don't threaten to interfere in the domestic political choices of their allies," Costa said.

Ukraine is preparing to present an alternative peace plan to Donald Trump and could do so as soon as today, Volodymyr Zelensky told a news conference yesterday.

An initial 28-point plan proposed by the US, widely viewed as being too favourable to Russia, has since been cut down to 20 points following talks between Ukrainian and US officials.

But sticking points still remain, most notably over the matter of occupied territories in eastern Ukraine and security guarantees to prevent another Russian invasion in future.

The original leaked version of the US-backed plan proposed that Ukraine hand over total control of the Donbas to Russia, even though Kremlin forces have not yet captured it in full.

According to the draft plan, energy produced at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, would be split between the two countries.

Zelensky said yesterday that his government has no right to agree to forfeit its land. "Russia is insisting that we give up territories, but we don't want to cede anything," he said.

"We have no legal right to do so, under Ukrainian law, our constitution and international law. And we don't have any moral right either.”