World leaders meeting in Washington for the NATO summit were sold a show of strength celebrating the Alliance’s 75th anniversary. But beyond the photo ops, there is a feeding frenzy. The White House was swamped by questions over the fitness of a US president who is six years older than the defence and security pact that in those days bound together nations against the threat of Soviet expansion. 

Long before Monday’s bombing of a children’s hospital in Kyiv, NATO leaders already knew they were coming up to decision time: whether to keep helping Ukraine defend itself or risk direct confrontation with Moscow by giving Volodymyr Zelensky the planes and missiles his country needs to take Vladimir Putin’s war to Russian soil.

With the US and France preoccupied with domestic politics, NATO’s has a crucial role to play this year with isolationist advocates on the march on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown.