The virtual meeting of high-level military officials was led by British Defense Secretary John Healey and his German counterpart Boris Pistorius. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and NATO leader Mark Rutte, as well as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, attended the so-called Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more bodies of their war dead, a Kremlin aide said on Thursday, part of an agreement struck at the second round of peace talks in Istanbul in June.

Russia now controls more than two-thirds of Ukraine’s Donetsk region — the main theater of the ground war. Russian forces have carved out a 10-mile-deep pocket around the Ukrainian troops defending the crucial city of Kostiantynivka, partly surrounding them from the east, south and west.