Meanwhile, Ukraine on Tuesday predicted the total costs for its defense at $120 billion for 2026, of which half would have to come from foreign support.

According to Zelenskyy and Ukrainian officials, the discussions in Berlin focused on a package of five documents that would underpin an eventual peace deal, several of which are dedicated to long‑term security guarantees for Ukraine. Kyiv says parts of the package are intended to be legally binding, with an “Article 5-like” mutual‑defense commitment, a reference to NATO nomenclature, requiring U.S. congressional approval and backed by additional European pledges.​

German officials describe Washington’s offer on legal and material guarantees as “truly remarkable” and a “very important step forward.” The conference marks the first major EU‑hosted attempt to shape the emerging security architecture around a potential ceasefire.

Europe, the U.S. and Ukraine “achieved a common sense of purpose” on Monday in their quest to end the war in Ukraine, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said during his opening remarks for the Ukraine Defense Contact Group on Tuesday. There had previously been significant differences between Europe and the U.S. regarding a peace plan proposed by Washington, which was perceived across the Atlantic as a capitulation to most of Moscow’s war aims.

The center of gravity has shifted toward Europe in the past months, as the continent is now single-handedly financing Ukraine’s continued defense against Russia following Washington’s suspension of military assistance since March 2025. Total European allocated aid since the start of Russia’s invasion now more than doubles U.S. support for Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute, a Germany-based research organization.

Besides progress on security guarantees, negotiators reported no tangible advance on the question of territorial concessions.

Russian demands for formal recognition of its hold over parts of eastern Ukraine remain incompatible with Kyiv’s public position, and Berlin officials describe the road ahead on these questions as “very long.”

Ukrainian government officials have repeatedly stressed that suggestions of ceding Ukrainian-held territory remain off the table and that any deal must avoid freezing the conflict on terms favorable to Moscow.​ European leaders have said only Ukrainians can decide on a path forward in territorial questions, despite U.S. pressure in recent weeks for Kyiv to give up about a fifth of its land to Russia.

Zelenskyy has signaled that once the five‑document package is finalized with U.S. and European partners, Kyiv expects a direct meeting with President Donald Trump to test whether Moscow will accept the emerging framework.

European and U.S. officials alike are portraying the Berlin talks as “very positive,” saying there is consensus on key issues even if the outcome stopped short of a formal ceasefire proposal.

A European-led multinational peacekeeping force to be deployed in Ukraine once the war ends is a key pillar of the proposed deal.

On Tuesday, British Defence Minister John Healey reaffirmed his country’s commitment to such a mission, saying that London continues “to direct funding to prepare our U.K. troops and armed forces so that we are ready to deploy when peace comes, with troops on the ground and jets in the air.”

Ten European leaders, along with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, issued a joint statement after the talks proposing a “multinational force for Ukraine” led by Europe and backed by the United States. The European proposal additionally called for “sustained and significant support to Ukraine to build its armed forces, which should remain at a peacetime level of 800,000.”

In the meantime, Ukraine will be reliant on support from its Western partners. Speaking at the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting on Tuesday, Denys Shmyhal, the Ukrainian minister of defense, said his country expected the war costs to total $120 billion next year, of which Ukraine would be able to cover half on its own.

“The remaining $60 billion must come from our partners,” Shmyhal said, asking the countries present to each allocate at least 0.25% of their 2026 economic power to Ukraine’s defensive effort. Air defense remains a priority, according to the defense minister.

“Strong and coordinated decisions will accelerate our path toward a just and lasting peace,” Shmyhal said. “Now is the moment to bring it closer.”

The secretive device has reportedly been employed on the battlefield against low-flying targets, likely unmanned aerial vehicles like the Iranian-made Shahed drones. It was first revealed in an interview with a Ukrainian news outlet by Colonel Vadym Sukharevskyi, the commander of the unmanned systems forces within the Ukrainian military.

The device is known as “Tryzub,” or trident in English, referencing the Ukrainian national symbol, which is superimposed in yellow on a blue background in the country’s now world-famous coat of arms.

Information on the new system is scarce and jealously guarded. It was first publicly mentioned by Sukharevskyi in mid-December when he revealed the weapon’s existence and some key parameters at a defense industry conference in Kyiv, as reported by the Ukrainian Interfax news agency. Asked about it again by Radio Free Europe in February of this year, he confirmed that the weapon was operationally deployed.

Speaking in the context of battlefield innovations to counter the threat of Shahed and similar drones and loitering munitions, he said that: “I repeat – laser technologies are already striking objects at a certain height.”

No pictures of the Tryzub have been released yet and it was not possible to independently verify the Ukrainian military’s claims. Nor have there been any indications as to where it was deployed or exactly what or how many targets it has engaged.

A spokesperson for Brave1, the Ukrainian government’s “united coordinational platform for defense tech,” said that it was “unable to provide any comments regarding the Tryzub weapons system or its development” in response to an inquiry.

It is unclear to what extent the Ukrainian laser weapon may still be in an experimental phase. Although the military has claimed that it succeeded in shooting down enemy “aircraft,” it is entirely possible that there may be just a single system and its mobility may be limited.

Laser weapons can be rather bulky due to their need for power generation and cooling infrastructure. This is a big part of why many of the systems developed around the world are ship-based. However, experts said that a laser weapon system with the specifications that Ukraine reportedly has may be made to fit onto a truck bed.

Comparable weapons, such as the South Korean Skylight, which entered regular production last year and has a similar range of two to three kilometers, is housed in a container with a volume of 81 cubic meters and generates approximately 700°C heat during ten- to twenty-second impulses. It entered service in December 2024.

Despite the technological challenges, many major players have toyed with the idea of developing similar weapons, and some have dabbled in research and design. The promised advantages primarily focus on the ability to defending against large numbers of low-cost attack aircraft, including drone swarms, at low cost.

In fielding such a system, Ukraine would join an elite club of significant military-industrial powers that have developed laser weapons and an even smaller group that has deployed them. It comes as part of broader Ukrainian efforts to reshape the battlefield through innovation.

The Unmanned Systems Forces, which appear to be involved in the operation and possibly the development of Tryzub, considering its commander’s role in announcing the system’s existence, was only established in 2024. It has also been involved in Ukrainian innovations of drone-swarming technologies that reportedly enhanced their ability to strike deep within enemy territory.

Lessons learned from Russia’s war against Ukraine may have hastened the development of laser weapons in other parts of the world. A month before South Korea’s laser weapon entered service, Japan revealed its own truck-based 10-kilowatt laser, which had been in development for more than four years.

Ukraine’s opponent, Russia, has also invested in laser technologies. In 2019, its Peresvet system was officially announced as having been deployed with five strategic missile divisions around the country. This weapon, however, is primarily meant to blind satellites in space rather than destroy drones much closer to Earth. Russia’s deputy prime minister in 2022 claimed that a new laser weapon, named Zadira, was deployed in Ukraine capable of destroying targets up to five kilometers away within five seconds, much more akin to the Tryzub that Ukraine now claims to have developed.

The U.S. and Ukraine at the time said there was no indication such a system was actually in use by Russian forces.

Germany, Israel and the United States all also have near-operational, land-based laser weapons systems, while other countries like Turkey and Australia are also indigenously working on them.

There has been some speculation whether the Ukrainian laser might be a derivative of the British DragonFire system. Significant amounts of the British “lethal aid” for Ukraine remain classified “for both operational and commercial reasons,” as the defense ministry has stated.

The U.K. government had teased its intention of sending its laser system to Ukraine in April 2024, before backtracking a month later and stating that it would not be included in the government’s 2024 aid package, UK Defence Journal reported. Leo Docherty, the British armed forces minister at the time, noted that the system was not yet ready, with the expected date for completion being 2027, a deadline that had been moved forward from 2033. Docherty’s statement left the door open for potentially sending the weapon to Ukraine once the development phase was complete.

Defense News reached out to the companies cooperating on the DragonFire system. MBDA, which leads the project, declined to comment, while Leonardo said that “there is no connection between Tryzub and the Dragonfire system.” Qinetiq did not respond to the request.

It is entirely possible that Tryzub is indeed an indigenous Ukrainian development. The country has a significant military-industrial base rooted in its significance to the Soviet military complex, important parts of which were based in the now-independent country. Combined with what is commercially available in the laser realm, crafty local engineers might have been able to build a Tryzub-like weapon, industry experts said, adding that the few publicly released parameters seem plausible.

“Laser directed-energy systems, in a military context, are predominantly at the proof of concept stage,” an industry insider, who asked to remain unnamed to discuss sensitive technologies, said. “These could, in theory, be fielded as an initial operating capability.”

The country has radically restructured its defense R&D and acquisition procedures, which has dramatically boosted innovation and responsiveness, a January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank showed. In the first nine months of 2024 alone, over 600 domestically developed new weapon systems were approved by the Ukrainian government.

And Ukraine’s February defense expo showcasing domestic military developments, Defense Tech 2025, promised a special focus on lasers and anti-Shahed weapons in its promotional materials – descriptions that fit the Tryzub – alongside other cutting-edge technologies like swarming drones, lethal autonomous weapons and sea drones.

Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces did not respond to a request for comment on this topic.

The rush to inject new defenses into cannon and rocket artillery systems, in particular, represents the latest round of a cat-and-mouse game in the electromagnetic spectrum. Invisible to the human eye, its mastery determines not only whether projectiles find their intended targets; but in some cases whether weapons will function at all.

The American-made HIMARS rocket launchers, for example, touted as a game changer after they were delivered to Ukraine, quickly faced problems that stemmed from GPS jamming, senior U.S. officials have admitted.

The Washington Post was the first to report the story last year, based on a confidential report on the effectiveness of weapons in combat. The verdict was damning: After the initial success and hype, HIMARS was now deemed “completely ineffective” at the hands of Russian jamming by the Ukrainians using them along the front line.

Multiple rocket launcher systems such as HIMARS rely on clear GPS data to operate effectively. For one, the vehicle must be able to detect precisely where it located in order to determine its relative position to the target. It also must be able to determine the location of GPS satellites in the sky above it, as this is vital information that is uploaded – along with other guidance data – to the missile right before launch in the form of what is referred to as an “almanac.” Once the missile leaves the launcher, it is typically on its own.

Some self-propelled howitzers, including French CAESAR and Swedish Archer types, are now also banking on GPS in their fire control systems.

Air-to-ground equipment

Buried in the U.S. Army budget request for fiscal year 2025, there are several mentions of upgrades to the GPS system of the service’s fleet of mobile missile launchers, amounting to a total of $75 million. The Army has bought a total of 376 anti-jamming kits for its HIMARS rocket launchers over the past two years, the documents show. A further 284 for both HIMARS and also the fleet of M270A1 vehicles are slated to be bought between 2025 and 2029.

The kit in question, the Digital GPS Anti-Jam Receiver, or DIGAR, is sold by BAE Systems and was originally intended for air warfare, where it has already found wide application – including being retrofitted onto American F-16 and F-15 fighter jets. Recently, it has also been slated for integration into Eurofighter Typhoons.

The more modern F-35 fighter jet goes with a competing solution by contractor Lockheed Martin, which also makes the plane.

“Integrating on a land vehicle does not require any more effort than going from one platform to another,” a BAE Systems spokesperson told Defense News. The main difference, according to the company, lies in the terrestrial environmental conditions in the form of dust, debris and rocket residue.

The roughly laptop-sized silver box has become a preferred way of countering electronic warfare targeting GPS signals, which even under the best of conditions are remarkably faint owing to the tens of thousands of kilometers of distance between the satellites and the surface of the Earth.

According to one industry insider, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the technology, testing by the U.S. Air Force had shown that “if a user was still being jammed even after fitting DIGAR, then the enemy transmitter would be so close you could engage it with a rifle.”

Other nations also are focusing on the threat of GPS interference to their heavy weaponry. In Denmark, the procurement of new, Israeli-made MLRS systems to replace those that were sent to Ukraine ended up mired in controversy after a report by the country’s public broadcaster alleged they were vulnerable to GPS attacks – a claim that was refuted by the manufacturer.

The U.K., for its part, has bought over 1,000 of Raytheon’s Landshield anti-jamming systems, which are roughly the size of a hockey puck. And Israel has been developing anti-jamming technologies, including for undisclosed foreign customers, using the new military M-Code GPS standard, which was designed to be resistant to interference.

“All the internationals are going to get DIGAR,” the industry insider said, referring to foreign users of American-made HIMARS launchers. In the case of European users, some had already started shipping their launchers to the U.S. to be taken apart, upgraded and then reassembled. All the newly manufactured HIMARS will get DIGAR right from the assembly line, the insider said.

While Lockheed has publicly announced that it will upgrade M270 launchers – the bigger, tracked version of the weapon – for “global partners,” there is to date no matching statement regarding HIMARS.

While attending celebrations for Russia’s Navy Day on Sunday, Putin said that his country would take “mirror measures to deploy” these weapons, which may be able to carry nuclear warheads, “taking into account the actions of the United States, its satellites in Europe and in other regions of the world.”

Putin pointed out the perceived threat that American plans to deploy medium-range missiles to Germany by 2026 pose to Russia.

“The flight time to targets on our territory of such missiles, which in the future may be equipped with nuclear warheads, will be about 10 minutes,” he said.

The White House on July 10 said that the U.S. was planning to “begin episodic deployments” of conventional missiles to Germany in 2026. The statement added that “these conventional long-range fires units will include SM-6, Tomahawk, and developmental hypersonic weapons, which have significantly longer range than current land-based fires in Europe.”

It remains unclear which missiles Moscow would seek to use or deploy, Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation who researches Russian missiles and arms control, said in an email to Defense News.

The ground-launched Kalibr was the “obvious” choice, he said, adding that it “will be easy to develop and test in time for 2026.” Increasing the range of Iskanders or even reviving the mothballed Rubezh project may also be on the table.

Iskander missiles are already stationed in Kaliningrad and Belarus, while longer-range systems could be stationed deeper in Russian territory, increasing early warning times on both sides.

“There is also the 9M729 cruise missile, which the US believes entered service in the 2010s,” Michael Duitsman, a research associate at the California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said in an email to Defense News.

He pointed out that Putin explicitly mentioned the “coastal troops” in his Sunday speech, which include coastal artillery forces.

“The Russian military has used two of these systems, Bal and Bastion, to strike land targets in Ukraine,” said Duitsman, remarking that both could be upgraded with missiles of increased ranges. “With Oniks-M missiles, [the Bastion unit based in Kaliningrad] could hypothetically strike throughout the entirety of Poland in addition to their assigned anti-ship mission,” he said.

The USSR and U.S. in 1987 signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which outlawed this entire class of weapons with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. By 1991, both countries had destroyed their entire stockpiles — a combined total of 2,692 missiles.

The Trump administration pulled out of the treaty in early 2019, alleging repeated Russian violations; in response, Russia, too, suspended its participation.

In his Sunday speech, Putin said that if the U.S. follows through on its missile deployment plans, Russia “will consider ourselves free from the previously imposed unilateral moratorium on the development of intermediate and shorter-range strike weapons.” The creation of such systems, he said, was “in its final stage.”

“We are entering a new Euromissile crisis,” said Nikolai Sokov, the senior fellow at the VCDNP. He added that, unlike Gorbachev, who was instrumental to the INF treaty’s success, Putin was less likely to make concessions. “A stand-off is more likely, and an agreement is less likely than was the case in the 1980s,” Sokov said.