While an invite to join Nato remains off the table this year for Ukraine, its allies and all members of the G7 are set to sign a long-term security arrangement with the war-hit nation that Rishi Sunak said had the potential to “return peace to Europe”.

The G7 declaration, out later today and expected to be ratified on the margins of the Nato summit in Vilnius, is set to provide more defence equipment, increase and accelerate intelligence sharing and bolster support for cyber defences.

It plans to expand training programmes and military exercises, while also developing Ukraine’s industrial capabilities, according to Downing Street.

As the British prime minister cited the UK as having played a leading role in the pact, No 10 said the accord marked the first time that so many countries had agreed a comprehensive multi-year security arrangement of such a nature with another country.

The announcement comes after Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his frustration that Nato has not offered a timeframe for Kyiv to join the alliance.

War changes things. There was a case, before Vladimir Putin launched his attempt to subdue the whole of Ukraine, for being cautious about Ukraine’s accession to Nato. It could be argued before February last year that accelerating Ukraine’s membership of the North Atlantic alliance would be regarded as a “provocation” by President Putin’s regime.

It would have been wrong for Mr Putin to regard Ukraine’s joining a defensive alliance in this way, of course, but there was an argument of realpolitik that, if it is known that something would be seen as a provocation by a nuclear-armed power, it made sense to think twice about it.

The world has now changed. Mr Putin, in his own mental universe, has already been “provoked”, and launched a special military operation to defend the people of greater Russia from the imaginary “Nazis” based in Kyiv.

The British government said on Tuesday it will provide Ukraine with more than 70 combat and logistic vehicles, thousands of rounds of ammunition for Challenger 2 tanks, and a £50 million ($64.7 million) support package for equipment repair.

Britain also said that all Group of Seven (G7) members – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and United States – were expected to sign a new framework on Wednesday that would provide long-term, bilateral security commitments for Ukraine, that would be detailed in due course.

NATO leaders were meeting at a summit in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, while a Ukrainian counteroffensive struggled to make headway against Russian occupying forces.

On Tuesday, NATO leaders said that Ukraine should be able to join the military alliance at some point in the future but they stopped short of offering Kyiv an immediate invitation, angering Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“Supporting Ukraine‘s progress on the pathway to NATO membership, coupled with formal, multilateral, and bilateral agreements and the overwhelming support of NATO members will send a strong signal to President Putin and return peace to Europe,” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement released by the government.

Representatives from Nato member states meet for a second day in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on Wednesday 12 July.

G7 allies are set to announce a security package for Ukraine at the summit, with the announcement coming after Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his frustration that Nato has not offered a timeframe for Kyiv to join.

Rishi Sunak believes the move has the potential to “return peace to Europe” and has cited the UK as having played a leading role in the pact.

President Joe Biden will tout diplomatic victories in war-weary Europe when he speaks at a NATO summit on Wednesday, celebrating the unity of the U.S.-led alliance over Ukraine as a promise to restore a divided world.

Speaking in Lithuania at the end of an eventful two-day meeting on Russia‘s doorstep, Biden plans to highlight new assistance for Ukraine and the U.S. role in ushering Sweden into the military alliance despite divisions among Western governments over how to bring the war in Ukraine to an end.

Biden’s speech means to rally allies and showcase his role on the world stage ahead of a 2024 re-election campaign focused on healing divisions at home and abroad.

He plans to tell world leaders in the speech “we’re at a high point of allied unity coming out of the summit and how we’ve rallied the world to support the people of Ukraine,” a White House official said.

The president will stress that “it’s important to build on that unity to tackle other important challenges … such as climate change, emerging technologies and threats to the rules-based international order,” the official said.

Despite the positive message, U.S. officials privately struggled with their counterparts in Vilnius to forge a consensus on where the war was headed, how to bring it to a close and what assurances to give Ukraine about its future in the Atlantic military alliance, according to four NATO diplomats involved in those conversations.

Ukraine, seeking an invitation to join NATO or at least a specific timetable for accession, received neither. NATO allies, instead, agreed that Ukraine would join eventually, when “allies agree and conditions are met,” their statement said but offered no details on when, if ever, Kyiv would meet such conditions.

Before leaving the United States to attend the summit, Biden bypassed allies’ concerns about approving cluster munitions for Ukraine to battle Russia.

Russia launched a wave of kamikaze drone attacks on Kyiv and other cities for a second night in row, Ukraine‘s military said on Wednesday, hours before President Volodymyr Zelensky was due to meet NATO leaders at a summit in Lithuania.

Russia launched a total of 15 of the Iranian Shahed drones on Ukraine overnight, with Ukraine‘s defence forces shooting down 11 of them, the country’s Air Force said on the Telegram messaging app.

Ihor Taburets, the military head of the Cherkasy region southeast of Kyiv, said on the Telegram messaging app that as a result of the drone strikes, two people were injured after a fire broke out in a non-residential infrastructure facility.

“A difficult night … The enemy attacked our area with ‘Shaheds’,” Taburets said on the Telegram messaging app.

It was not immediately known how many drones were launched on Cherkasy and how many on Kyiv.

“The 504th day of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine. The enemy launched another air attack on the capital,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration said on the Telegram messaging app.

Moscow’s ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has said that the ongoing Nato summit in Vilnius exhibits the alliance’s intention to deploy more and more troops on the Russian border.

“The meeting in Vilnius demonstrated the bloc’s intention to concentrate more and more troops on Russian borders. We have nowhere to retreat,” he told the Russian state TASS agency.

Mr Antonov added that the statements in Vilnius also confirmed the “anti-Russian drive” of Nato, which has thrown all its resources “into the fight against our country.”

He did not mention that Russia invaded Ukraine last year, leading Western powers to support Ukraine’s military in defending its territory while limiting the supply of long-range weapons that could be used to target Russia itself.

Russian forces fired a wave of kamikaze drone attacks on the city of Kyiv and its wider region for a second night in row, Ukraine‘s military said today.

“The 504th day of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine. The enemy launched another air attack on the capital,” Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s military administration said on Telegram.

The overnight attack came just hours before Volodymyr Zelensky was expected to meet Nato leaders at a summit that has backed Ukraine’s independence and military adeptness in the continuing war.

According to preliminary information from the Ukrainian military there were no immediate reports of casualties or major destruction. All drones were intercepted before hitting their targets, it said.

Witnesses heard blast noises in Kyiv, resembling the sound of air defence systems intercepting aerial objects.

Officials have not yet stated the number of Iranian Shahed drones Russia launched and how many were intercepted.

The war in Ukraine will continue until the West gives up plans to dominate and defeat Moscow, Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said, calling the Russian full-scale invasion an “armed confrontation”.

“Why doesn’t the armed confrontation in Ukraine come to an end? The answer is very simple. It will continue until the West gives up its plans to preserve its domination and overcome its obsessive desire to inflict on Russia a strategic defeat at the hands of its Kyiv puppets,” according to a transcript of the interview with Indonesian newspaper Kompas published on Russia’s foreign ministry website.

“For the time being, there are no signs of change in this position,” he said, speaking at the same time as Nato allies meet for a key summit where military aid for Ukraine is top of the agenda.

Western nations have called on Vladimir Putin to end the Ukraine conflict by withdrawing his troops from the neighbouring country.

In the more than 500 days since Russia invaded Ukraine – dubbed a “special military operation” by Putin on the first day of the war in February last year – tens of thousands of troops have been killed, millions of civilians displaced and hundreds of children have been killed in bombing raids on public infrastructure.

Mr Lavrov claimed that the goal of the “US-led collective West” in supporting Ukraine is to bolster its global hegemony.

The West has stated its clear intentions to help Ukraine win its conflict with Russia, and Western powers have supplied large amounts of modern arms and ammunition to help Kyiv defend its territory.

US president Joe Biden skipped a dinner with Nato leaders last night and instead returned to his hotel room in Lithuania.

A US official was reported as saying that the US president skipped the dinner because he has four full days of official business ahead of him and is preparing for a major speech for today.

Mr Biden, who arrived in Europe on Sunday, sent Secretary of State Antony Blinken to the dinner in his place.

The gathered leaders have offered an invitation to Ukraine to join in the defence alliance, pending certain conditions.