Ukraine morning briefing: NATO plan to repel Russia as 250,000 flee homes

Plans are being drawn-up to "transform" NATO in the wake of the Vladimir Putin regime's invasion of Ukraine, so that the military alliance would be able to repel an invasion by Russia along its eastern borders.

NATO's Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told The Telegraph that NATO was “in the midst of a very fundamental transformation” in response to the invasion of Ukraine. And he said the alliance's new "strategic concept" would also, for the first time, acknowledge that the "rise of China, the shifting global balance of power, has direct consequences for NATO".

Mr Stoltenberg said that NATO's small “tripwire” force on its Eastern border - in former Soviet states like Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - "would be transformed into a major force capable of taking on an invading army". He said that NATO now had 40,000 troops stationed along its eastern borders - a force that is nearly 10 times the size it was before Russia's invasion.

Mr Stoltenberg said: "What we see now is a new reality, a new normal for European security," said Mr Stoltenberg. "Therefore, we have now asked our military commanders to provide options for what we call a reset, a longer-term adaptation of NATO. I expect that NATO leaders will make decisions on this when they meet in Madrid at the NATO summit in June."

More than 400,000 eastern Ukrainians ordered to abandon their homes

More than 400,000 people in eastern Ukraine have been ordered to abandon their homes, as artillery fire rains down on the region ahead of a predicted major new Russian offensive in the area.

Luhansk Governor Serhiy Gadai said that more than 250,000 people acted on the order to flee - but as many as 120,000 residents have stayed behind. Mr Gadai said approximately 30 per cent