Some U.S. lawmakers do not understand the scale of Russia's rearmament campaign, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Friday, a day after he held talks with U.S. President Donald Trump in the White House.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has expressed that some US lawmakers do not understand the scale of Russia’s rearmament campaign. Source: Reuters, citing Merz in a statement at a business conference in Berlin,

Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb took out more than a third of Russia's strategic cruise missile carriers, Kyiv officials said.

Germany has given Ukraine the green light to strike targets inside Russia using long-range weapons supplied by Berlin, in a decision that signals a notable hardening of Western resolve as the war grinds on.

Europe is capable of sustaining Ukraine's resistance against Russia, even if the United States were to decide to completely halt its military support to Kyiv, the senior military official in charge of coordinating Germany's arms supplies told Reuters.

A statement from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on May 26 about long-range strikes inside Russia resurrected a long-held hope in Ukraine — that Berlin is finally about to send Kyiv its Taurus missiles.

Donald Trump has said there will be “no immediate peace” in Ukraine following a phone call with Vladimir Putin. In a social media post after the call on Wednesday, the US president said Mr Putin had told him “very strongly” that he would respond to Ukraine’s weekend drone attack on Russian airfields.

The scope and timing of a potential Russian counterattack was still unclear as of Wednesday afternoon, the German defense minister said.