NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is holding an informal meeting on Wednesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders to discuss the “next steps” in the conflict with Russia.

The meeting is expected to include several heads of government, such as Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as well as senior officials from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Poland.

The United Kingdom will be represented by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, while the European Union will be represented by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa.

Speaking to the Italian parliament on Tuesday, Meloni stated that the meeting in Brussels was an “important opportunity to discuss the future of the conflict.”

On Wednesday, Rutte stated that the current priority was to provide Ukraine with weapons and resources to place the country in a stronger position.

“If we now discuss among ourselves what a potential agreement might look like, we will be making it easier for Russia,” he said.

Meanwhile, Scholz stated that discussing the deployment of troops to monitor a ceasefire “makes no sense.”

On Wednesday, before the European Parliament, von der Leyen emphasized that reinforcing Ukraine’s capabilities was “not just a moral imperative, but also a strategic one.”

According to von der Leyen, “The world is watching. Our friends, and especially our adversaries, are closely observing how we sustain our support for Ukraine.”

For Ukraine, it is a race against time, as Trump insists on a peace agreement to end the war (which he promises to resolve in one day) and suggests the possibility of suspending military aid to Kiev.

Ukrainian leaders, who had been adamantly opposed to the idea of peace negotiations with Russia, are now admitting the possibility, provided the country’s security is guaranteed.

A patient has been hospitalized with a severe case of avian flu in Louisiana, United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Wednesday.

Authorities have recorded a total of 61 cases of avian flu infections in the U.S., but all other cases have been mild.

Details of the confirmed case, which occurred on Friday, have not been disclosed, and the patient’s prognosis is unknown.

Genetic sequencing revealed that the H5N1 virus in the patient belonged to the D1.1 genotype, which has recently been detected in wild and domestic birds in the U.S., as well as in people in Washington state and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

The D1.1 genotype differs from the B3.13, which was identified in dairy cows and has triggered some outbreaks in poultry and people with mild symptoms like conjunctivitis.

A few human cases in the U.S. have not come from contact with animals, but health authorities believe it is too early to suggest person-to-person transmission.

The CDC considers the risk to the general public to be low.

In March, an outbreak of highly pathogenic avian flu or H5N1 was first reported in several states.

A 65-year-old Austrian citizen was arrested at a border checkpoint in Croatia after attempting to enter the country in his car with a deceased woman sitting as a passenger, police announced on Tuesday.

The man was detained in a routine check in late November in Gunja, a border area separating Bosnia from Croatia, the police told AFP. Suspicious because they saw “no consciousness or movement” from the passenger, Croatian officers called a doctor, who confirmed the death of the 83-year-old woman, also Austrian, according to her identification.

The woman’s relationship to the suspect is unknown. She had died in Bosnia, and the man intended to repatriate her body to Austria to “avoid the formalities related to transporting a corpse,” according to the police. Croatian media reported that the man was her legal guardian.

Once her death was confirmed, a funeral service took charge of the body.