Biden’s speech hints that the war may be very long.

“Putin still wrongly believes he can outlast Ukraine,’’ Mr. Biden said, describing the Russian president as a man who made a huge strategic mistake in invading a neighboring country and who is now doubling down. “After all this time Putin still doubts our staying power. He is making a bad bet.”

The speech, at Vilnius University, came after a series of important victories for Mr. Biden as NATO’s de facto leader. His success in cajoling the leader of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to drop his objections to Sweden’s admission as the 32nd member of NATO now makes it possible to turn the Baltic Sea into a region bounded almost entirely by the alliance, except for a small coastline for Russia. Mr. Erdogan, however, has since suggested that Turkey’s Parliament may not take up the issue until October.

At the same time, Mr. Biden managed to quash an effort by Ukraine, with the support of Poland and several of the Baltic nations, to give a timetable for Ukraine to formally enter the alliance as a member — a step that Mr. Biden fears could put the United States in direct conflict with Russian forces.

In response, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had an angry outburst that the allies smoothed over here with promises of more aid and the inaugural meeting on Wednesday of a new NATO-Ukraine Council meant to give Ukraine a voice alongside NATO members on issues related to the country’s security.

Mr. Zelensky, faced with making the best of what he could get, called the move a victory on Wednesday, and sat for the first time as an official partner — if not a member — of NATO. Ukraine is essentially a nonvoting member, something Mr. Zelensky is selling at home as half-step toward full status.

While NATO has refused to offer a time frame for Ukraine to join, Mr. Zelensky, in a statement, showed no such hesitation. “I believe that we will be in NATO as soon as the security situation is stabilized,” he said. “In simple terms, the moment the war is over.”

The planned protest, covered by the Swedish news media, fed into a tense debate after the burning of a Quran outside a mosque in Stockholm last month during Eid al-Adha, an important Muslim holiday, led to protests and widespread condemnation.

The episode also added to strains with Turkey, which had held up Sweden’s NATO bid partly over what it said was Sweden’s harboring of dissidents whom it views as terrorists, including pro-Kurdish activists. In a sudden reversal, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey on Monday agreed to clear the way for Sweden’s entry.

Sweden, among other countries, has wrestled with how to handle protests involving the burning of the Quran. Critics have called them incitements of religious hate, and the government has called the acts Islamophobic and warned that the burnings have consequences for Sweden security. But Swedish courts have overturned decisions from the authorities to refuse permission for such protests, saying they do not have enough evidence that it would disrupt public order and security to infringe on rights to freedom of speech.

The local authorities granted Mr. Ljungkvist a protest permit, citing freedom of speech rights. “We can’t say no to an application for freedom of speech,” said Mattias Sigfridsson, a police commissioner for Skane County, which includes Helsingborg.

After Turkey agreed to support Sweden’s bid, Mr. Ljungkvist was quoted by the Aftonbladet news outlet as saying that he had changed his mind and would burn a copy of the NATO statutes instead. He had initially said he wanted to burn a religious text to try to delay or stop the process to join NATO, Aftonbladet reported, without elaborating.

At the protest on Wednesday, the man apologized for any offense he had caused along the way, according to a police spokesman, saying that his intention was to vocalize his opposition to NATO. He had said earlier that he wanted to support freedom of speech.

The issue of Quran burnings in Europe recently spurred a debate before the United Nations Human Rights Council, which passed a resolution on Wednesday calling on countries to examine their laws to prevent religious hatred. Countries, including the United States, however, disputed the resolution saying that though they opposed religious intolerance, the measure impinged on freedom of speech.

Mr. Erdogan’s remarks, hinting that Sweden’s accession may not be a done deal, were bound to disappoint many of his NATO allies, who had hoped that Mr. Erdogan’s use of the issue to win concessions for Turkey over the past year had finally come to an end. Mr. Erdogan also said that Sweden needed to continue working to address Turkey’s security concerns, suggesting that he was not yet ready to give up his leverage.

“The parliament is not in session for the next two months,” Mr. Erdogan told reporters in Vilnius, Lithuania, near the end of the annual NATO summit. “But our target is to finalize this matter as swiftly as possible.”

Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year. Turkey initially opposed allowing either country to join, accusing them of harboring dissidents that Turkey considers terrorists.

Mr. Erdogan eventually dropped his opposition to Finland’s accession, and it joined the alliance in April. But Turkey’s grievances against Sweden were much greater. Turkish officials accused Sweden of giving free rein to supporters of a Kurdish terrorist organization and to members of a religious group that Turkey has accused of plotting a failed coup against Mr. Erdogan in 2016.

To appease Turkey, Sweden has amended its constitution, hardened its antiterrorism laws, dropped an embargo on arms exports to Turkey and agreed to extradite a small number of people Turkey requested.

But Swedish courts have blocked other extraditions, and Swedish officials have said they cannot override their country’s freedom of expression laws to block public protests that have included burning the Quran. The protests have infuriated Turkey.

Then, on Monday, NATO announced that Turkey had dropped its objection to Sweden joining the alliance as part of a new agreement intended to let the alliance’s leaders project a stronger sense of unity against President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

NATO is not a combatant in the war and is eager not to be seen as one, especially as the Russian narrative is that its invasion of Ukraine was a defensive war against NATO aggression. NATO only supplies Ukraine with nonlethal aid.

But the individual countries of the G7 are free to make their own security promises. The statement was an effort by the seven countries — only one of which, Japan, is not a member of NATO — to show their resolve and to encourage other countries to follow their example in giving longer-term security commitments and aid to Ukraine.

Here are the key points of their statement:

• The G7 pledged to continue to support Ukraine’s right to self-defense by providing military equipment and weapons, with a focus on “air defense, artillery and long-range fires, armored vehicles” and air combat. They also said they would continue intelligence sharing with Ukraine, strengthen Kyiv’s defense industry and train Ukrainian troops.

• The countries will also work to increase the ability of Ukrainian and Western forces to operate in conjunction with each other, as well as to develop Ukraine’s capacity to combat cyberthreats.

• They also committed to providing further economic assistance to Ukraine, aid in reconstruction and recovery efforts, and “technical and financial support for Ukraine’s immediate needs stemming from Russia’s war.”

For its part, Ukraine pledged to pursue anticorruption policies, as well as work on overhauls to highlight its commitments to democracy and the rule of law.

Kyiv also promised to strengthen democratic civilian control of the military and make the country’s defense industry more transparent.

On Wednesday, mystery deepened over the fate of Gen. Sergei Surovikin, the country’s former top commander in Ukraine, who has been dubbed “General Armageddon” for his ruthless tactics, and who has not been seen since the rebellion.

One of the country’s top lawmakers said, when pressed by a reporter, that the general was “taking a rest.”

“He is unavailable right now,” the lawmaker, Andrei Kartapolov, the head of the Russian Duma’s defense committee, added in a video posted on the Telegram messaging app before hurrying away from the reporter.

General Surovikin, was considered to be an ally of Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary company, whose forces mounted the brief insurrection in late June aimed at toppling Russia’s military leadership, before standing down in a deal with the Kremlin.

The New York Times reported that U.S. officials believe General Surovikin had advance knowledge of the mutiny but do not know whether he participated. In the hours after the rebellion began, the Russian authorities quickly released a video of the general calling on the Wagner fighters to stand down.

The lawmaker’s enigmatic comment about General Surovikin came two days after the Russian authorities released the first footage of the country’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, since the insurrection.

In the video, General Gerasimov was receiving a report from the Russian Aerospace Forces, which are run by General Surovikin. But the person giving the update in the footage was General Surovikin’s deputy, Col. Gen. Viktor Afzalov.

General Surovikin’s location is just one of the many mysteries that have arisen since the mutiny. Despite a deal announced by the Kremlin, under which Mr. Prigozhin would depart Russia for Belarus and avoid prosecution, the mercenary tycoon appears to have remained in Russia.

The Kremlin disclosed earlier this week that Mr. Prigozhin and his top commanders had met with President Vladimir V. Putin five days after the mutiny, raising many questions about what sort of deal had been struck with the former insurrectionists.

Russia, meanwhile, received another blow to its top military ranks. Lt. Gen. Oleg Tsokov, the deputy commander of Russia’s Southern Military District, was killed in Ukraine during Monday night missile strike on the occupied city of Berdiansk, marking one of the highest-level losses for Russia during the course of the war, Ukrainian authorities announced.

A Russian lawmaker and retired general, Andrei Gurulyov, confirmed Tsokov’s death in an appearance on state television Wednesday, saying he “died heroically.” The death recalled the early days of the war, when Ukrainian officials said they had killed approximately 12 generals on the front lines.

Russian authorities also arrested a Ukrainian man Wednesday on suspicion of gunning down a former Russian submarine commander, Lt. Gen. Stanislav Rzhitsky, earlier this week in the southern city of Krasnodar, where he had been serving as the deputy director of the city’s mobilization office.

Russian news outlets reported that General Rzhitsky, who posted his running routes publicly on the exercise service Strava, was shot to death while jogging in a Krasnodar park.

On Tuesday, the day after the body was found, Ukrainian military intelligence said on its official Telegram account that General Rzhitsky had commanded a submarine that was involved in missile attacks on Ukraine. Friends and relatives, however, told Russian news outlets that he had left the active-duty military service before the February 2022 invasion.

The state news agency RIA Novosti, citing an anonymous source in Russian law enforcement, reported that the man arrested Wednesday had admitted under questioning to being recruited by Ukrainian intelligence to carry out the killing.

General Rzhitsky’s name had been entered in the online database Myrotvorets, which posts photographs, social media accounts and telephone numbers of people considered to have committed crimes against Ukraine.

A red stamp was added over his photograph on the database reading, “Liquidated.”

“Why is China a systemic challenge to NATO?” Mr. Wang asked. “Long-term peace and security in Asia-Pacific relies on mutual respect and cooperation among Asian countries.”

At a summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Tuesday, the leaders of NATO member nations issued a lengthy statement that dealt mainly with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but also included 15 mentions of China. Beijing was accused of threatening cybersecurity in the West, expanding its nuclear forces and subverting international rules at sea and in space.

“The People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values,” the statement said. “The P.R.C. employs a broad range of political, economic and military tools to increase its global footprint and project power, while remaining opaque about its strategy, intentions and military buildup.”

In the past few years, China has built the world’s largest navy, at least as measured by the number of vessels, and has stepped up construction of intercontinental ballistic missile silos. China has also constructed a string of artificial islands fortified with military bases in the South China Sea, and has stepped up military flights near Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy over which Beijing claims sovereignty.

The United States has been the dominant military power in the western Pacific since the end of World War II. Its military has grown increasingly alarmed at China’s rising military strength.

European nations have been more focused on stopping Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But they have come under pressure from the United States to support a strong response to China while the American military helps Europe by arming Ukraine.

Li You contributed research.

The bloggers said they had expected Ukraine to make a concerted battlefield push ahead of the meeting, hoping to prove that it can win the war if Kyiv receives more weapons from its Western allies.

“Everyone was waiting for this event on the front lines,” said Mikhail Zvinchuk, a popular pro-invasion military analyst better known under his moniker, Rybar. “Everyone was expecting the Ukrainians to launch the second phase of their counteroffensive.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky has defended the pace of the counteroffensive in Ukraine’s south and east, as Kyiv’s forces have encountered minefields and entrenched Russian forces. Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently warned that the fight would be long and bloody and that “no one should have any illusions about that.”

But Russian commentators tried to cast the pace of the counteroffensive as a letdown.

“I think they originally planned to reach the sea and borders of Crimea ahead of the summit,” said Aleksandr Aratyunov, a former special forces fighter and author of Razvedos, a popular military blog. “Something didn’t go right.”

Andrei Medvedev, a Russian journalist and lawmaker, warned that Kyiv might launch a renewed push imminently.

“In its current phase, the offensive has been neither effective nor spectacular,” he remarked in a post on Telegram, a social messaging app. “Therefore, a new offensive might start very soon.”

NATO allies said in their communiqué from the meeting that “Ukraine’s future” is in the alliance, but did not set out any specifics. Ukraine is coming away, however, with promises of further integration, vows of continued unity and military equipment meant to strengthen the counteroffensive.

Some bloggers took the lack of a specific timeline for entry as a sign that NATO is just using Ukraine as a means of weakening Russia and has no plans of letting it join the alliance, echoing a Kremlin theme that Moscow is waging a broader battle against the West.

“They weren’t accepted, which is logical; they are fulfilling their function well anyway,” said Ivan Ivanov, the author of Fighterbomber, a blog associated with the Russian Air Force.

“Today, only one country decides whether Ukraine will join NATO,” he added. “That is Russia.”

He said Russia recently lost an estimated 2,500 tons of ammunition when a depot was blown up by one of the long-range missiles that Britain gave to Ukraine. He did not elaborate, and the claim has not been independently verified.

Speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, Mr. Wallace also made a series of off-the-cuff, occasionally stinging remarks about the war in Ukraine. He derided the officials overseeing Russia’s war effort — Sergei K. Shoigu, the defense minister, and Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, the chief of general staff — as “Laurel and Hardy.” And he said that China, which has maintained a close partnership with Moscow, viewed Russia as “the embarrassing uncle you don’t really want to get too close to.”

He also suggested that Ukrainian officials tone down some of their demands for military aid and express more appreciation for Western allies that have spent tens of billions of dollars to supply Ukraine with weapons and training.

“There is a slight word of caution here, which is, whether we like it or not people want to see gratitude,” Mr. Wallace said.

“You know, we’re not Amazon,” Mr. Wallace went on. He said Britain has given Ukraine so many mine-clearing vehicles that “I think there’s none left.”

He rapped Ukraine for renewing its request for American long-range missiles “within minutes” of being given cluster munitions last week. The munitions have been banned by more than 100 countries because they have been shown to kill children and other civilians who accidentally detonate them years after they are deployed.

Referring to next year’s presidential elections in the United States, Mr. Wallace suggested that the Ukrainian officials remember that they must “persuade doubting politicians in other countries that it’s worth it” to continue bankrolling Kyiv’s war effort.

In his own remarks to journalists in Vilnius a short time later, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine expressed “gratitude” for the support he has received from the United States and other NATO nations — but that he still planned to renew his request for the long-range missiles known as ATACMS at a meeting with Mr. Biden later on Wednesday.

“This means it’s time to unsheathe our arsenal of these inhumane munitions,” Mr. Medvedev wrote in a post on the Telegram app.

Cluster munitions disperse tiny bomblets that sometimes fail to explode on hitting the ground, only to detonate years later when disturbed by civilians. Most countries outlaw them, but Russia, Ukraine and the United States are not signatories to an international treaty banning their use. The New York Times has documented Russia’s extensive use of cluster munitions in Ukraine, and Ukraine’s use of them in efforts to retake occupied areas.

Russia’s defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, in videotaped remarks released earlier on Tuesday, claimed that Moscow had not used cluster munitions during its operations in Ukraine.

“Russia, realizing the threat that such munitions pose to the civilian population, has refrained and is refraining from using them in the special operation,” Mr. Shoigu said, using the Kremlin’s term for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

The defense minister added that Moscow would now be forced to use similar weapons against Ukrainian forces, and that Russia’s arsenal of cluster munitions is “wider and more diverse” than that of the United States.

It was not immediately clear what the comments would mean for the fighting in Ukraine. The reality is that both Russia and Ukraine have both been using cluster munitions in the conflict for a long time.

Human Rights Watch, which has also extensively documented the use of cluster munitions by both Russian and Ukrainian forces, wrote in a report last year that in the first two and a half months of the war, Russia “used at least six types of cluster munitions in attacks that have caused hundreds of civilian casualties and damaged civilian objects, including homes, hospitals and schools.”

President Biden said in an interview with CNN last week that the United States decided to provide cluster munitions to Ukraine because Kyiv is running out of ammunition. He said the munitions would be supplied temporarily until more 155-millimeter artillery shells could be produced and shipped to Ukraine.

Ms. Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, the parents of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who has been jailed in Russia since March, said in the interview that President Biden had personally promised to do “whatever it takes” to get their son home.

Mr. Gershkovich, 31, was detained during a reporting trip and charged with espionage. Both the U.S. government and The Journal have categorically denied the accusations and the United States considers him “wrongfully detained.”

The Biden administration confirmed last week that it was in talks with Russia about a potential prisoner swap that would include the reporter, but said that the discussions had not “produced a clear pathway to a resolution.”

Ms. Milman said Mr. Biden spoke to them as a fellow parent and said he understood their pain. After assurances from the president and his secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, she said she felt “very very optimistic that it’s going in the right direction.”

Mr. Gershkovich’s parents have exchanged letters with their son and have twice flown to Moscow to attend his court hearings, speaking to him through a glass barrier at one of them. He has been in strong spirits during his detention, his parents said, joking with them and even teasing his mother that the breakfast at the Lefortovo prison reminded him of her cooking.

In the interview, Mikhail Gershkovich also described how committed his son was to reporting on Russia.

“He considered it both a privilege and responsibility — that he was accredited, and that he was a foreign journalist, not a Russian. He was one of few people who could report honestly what he saw,” he said.

Ms. Milman said she had worried about her son, especially when he published articles about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. She said she wanted to tell the Russian authorities that journalism is not a crime.

Once she gets her son back, she will hold him close, Ms. Milman said in the interview.

“I just wouldn’t let him out, anywhere,” she said. “For several days at least.”

Ukraine has long coveted the ATACMS, which have a range of about 190 miles, or about 40 miles more than the missiles France and Britain are providing.

The Pentagon has maintained that Ukraine currently does not need ATACMS, which would be able to reach behind enemy lines, including in Russia and occupied Crimea.

But two American officials and one European official described a quiet debate within the Biden administration over whether to send even a few of the surface-to-surface guided missiles, which are being reserved for other security threats. The officials spoke on the condition on anonymity to discuss an internal administration debate.

Like the United States, France had previously ruled out providing Ukraine with longer-range missiles, over concerns they could be used to attack targets in Russia, escalating the conflict. But President Emmanuel Macron said he was sending the SCALP missiles now to help Ukraine defend itself.

“In light of the situation and the counteroffensive being conducted by Ukraine, I have decided to increase deliveries of weapons and equipment and to provide the Ukrainians with deep-strike capabilities,” Mr. Macron said upon arriving in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, on Tuesday for NATO’s annual summit.

The counteroffensive has been progressing slowly, as the Ukrainians are coming up against Russian forces that have had months to build defensive positions.

The United States has been moving past its reluctance to provide advanced weaponry to Ukraine, which was based in part on the administration’s fears of causing the conflict to intensify. The administration has reversed itself on several weapons systems, eventually agreeing to send Patriot air defenses, Abrams tanks and cluster munitions.

President Biden made the decision on the cluster munitions just last week. He defended his decision on Friday to provide the munitions, which are outlawed by many of America’s closest allies, saying that it was a difficult choice but that “the Ukrainians are running out of ammunition.”

Other military assistance pledged to Ukraine at the NATO meeting included 25 more Leopard tanks, 40 additional infantry fighting vehicles, and two more Patriot air defense missile launchers in a $770 million package from Germany, and $240 million from Norway for unspecified equipment and other support.

Additionally, the defense ministers from Denmark and the Netherlands announced they had gathered 11 countries to help begin training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighters jets and would create a school to do so in Romania.

The ATACMS are among the last major weapons systems that Kyiv wants and the United States is reluctant to give.

American defense officials have warned that their arsenal of ATACMS is relatively small, and the missiles have been committed for other Pentagon war plans, in places including the Korean Peninsula. Only about 4,000 ATACMS have been manufactured since the missile was developed in the 1980s, a Lockheed Martin spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

Giving them to Ukraine would risk readiness in the other hot spots.

Shortly after Ukraine launched its counteroffensive last month, House Republicans formally called on the Biden administration to “immediately” send ATACMS to Ukraine, noting that other allies have already donated their own long-range missiles.

France’s announcement on Tuesday could either fuel the pressure campaign or, conversely, ease it now that Ukraine is receiving long-range missiles from other countries.

“The military reason to do this is illustrated, to some extent, by what’s going on right now, with respect to the counteroffensive,” said Franklin D. Kramer, a former assistant secretary of defense for international affairs.

Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, told journalists on Tuesday that he was “absolutely sure everything that is impossible right now” will become possible.

He said he remained in contact with American officials over ATACMS, and with German officials, whom Kyiv is pressing for Taurus missiles, which have a range of about 310 miles.

Mr. Reznikov made clear that he would not stop asking for ATACMs or long-range missiles from any ally.

“We need more weaponry,” he said.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London and Zolan Kanno-Youngs from Vilnius.

“We had the American ‘yes’ on training,” Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, said on the sidelines of the summit. “The next step, of course, has to be an American ‘yes’ on also actually making use of the F-16s in combat by Ukrainian fighter pilots.”

Ukraine has for months argued that F-16s would augment its existing fleet and could be used both for air defense and to attack targets in parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian forces far behind the front lines in the war.

However, the Biden administration has focused on sending weapons that will help Ukraine in its counteroffensive against Russia — a campaign that many in the West hope will be a turning point in the war. A senior American official said recently that the cost of sending F-16s would absorb much of an already dwindling pot of U.S. war funding.

Whether the United States will stay reluctant remains to be seen. The Biden administration has previously declined to comply with several of Ukraine’s request for advanced weapons, only to consent later under pressure from allies in Europe and from Congress.

Denmark’s acting defense minister, Troels Lund Poulsen, said that there would be results by the start of next year, but he gave few other details. Denmark has already begun training pilots, Mr. Poulsen said, in comments reported last month by Janes, the defense intelligence firm.

Ukraine’s defense minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said the country was impatient to receive the jets, but he acknowledged that it was difficult to lay the groundwork for the arrival of what he called “very sophisticated systems.”

“It will take time, these training courses for pilots, and especially for our engineers and technicians,” he told journalists in Vilnius. “Simultaneously we will prepare our airfields and our infrastructure.”

Lara Jakes contributed reporting.

Colonel Tsyba had some ideas for them.

“They should understand how the enemy behaves, how he attacks, how he defends, how his logistics work,” Colonel Tsyba said of NATO member states. “All this is gained from experience. It’s not in a textbook. But we understand it. This is our reality. We have this experience.”

Ukraine is a beneficiary of vast quantities of military aid from the United States and other nations in NATO, and has applied to join the mutual-defense alliance. Mr. Biden has said that Ukraine is not yet ready, and that it cannot be admitted while at war, since that would bring NATO directly into the conflict.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has acknowledged the timing issue, but demands a clear timeline for joining. And Ukrainian officials hold that their country would be a valuable addition to NATO, given the extensive combat experience of the Ukrainian Army.

In Kyiv’s counteroffensive underway in southern Ukraine this summer, brigades that fought continually for more than a year have advanced farther than those newly trained and armed by NATO countries. Of course, many factors might account for the differing paces of the units, such as terrain or the density of Russian minefields and defensive lines.

Still, Ukrainian soldiers interviewed on Tuesday emphasized the value of combat experience in fighting the Russians.

“This theory has a right to exist,” said Maj. Nazariy Tofan, who commands an artillery division.

He, like Colonel Tsyba, serves in Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, which is among Ukraine’s most battle-hardened units. The brigade has so far advanced farther than others in the counteroffensive, and is now breaking through a second line of Russian defenses after reclaiming several villages and crossing about five miles of minefields.

Yet the brigade is fighting without the Western weaponry provided specifically to aid Ukraine’s counterattack this summer, like German Leopard tanks and American Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Some soldiers were trained in Britain last year, but the brigade was not among those trained in Europe this year ahead of the counteroffensive.

Soldiers in the brigade fought in the southern city of Mariupol when it was surrounded in the first months of the war and in the Donbas region in Ukraine’s east before joining the counteroffensive in the south last month.

The brigade is equipped with American M113 armored personnel carriers, American Javelin anti-tank missiles and other Western weaponry. And more would certainly be welcome, said Major Tofan, who commands batteries of Soviet legacy 122-millimeter howitzers.

They are less accurate and pack less of a punch than Western artillery systems, he said.

“There should be less talk and more aid,” Major Tofan said, in an interview under a grape arbor in a house he is quartering in some distance back from the front line. “We have to look reality in the eye. Every day we have a summit and talks is a day more of our people die.”

Ukraine now has about a million people under arms, including soldiers in the army and national guard and militarized police units. Over a year and four months of fighting, the Ukrainian Army has defeated Russia in three previous counteroffensives, north of Kyiv and in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions, and is emerging as a powerful force that could reshape the security landscape in Eastern Europe.

“If you have combat knowledge, you know what to do quickly and effectively,” Major Tofan said. “Knowledge in books and knowledge in combat are very different things.”

The wording essentially marked a victory for President Biden, who recently declared that “Ukraine isn’t ready for NATO membership.” Just hours before the communiqué was issued, Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine sharply criticized the “uncertainty” over Ukraine’s path to membership in the alliance.

Alliance leaders struggled to agree on language about how to describe a timeline and conditions for what everyone agrees will be Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO. The battle inside NATO was not over whether Ukraine would join, but how and under what conditions. Some countries wanted an immediate invitation after the war ends; other countries, like the United States, wanted to avoid any notion that entry would be automatic.

While Mr. Zelensky wanted more, NATO officials argue that he will have numerous benefits to bring home from this summit, with closer ties to NATO, a firmer commitment to membership and specific offers of longer-term financial and military help.

Asked about Mr. Zelensky’s concerns, Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said that the most important thing now was to ensure that his country wins the war against Russia because “unless Ukraine prevails, there is no membership to be discussed at all.” Mr. Stoltenberg said the commitments now were different from the vague promise made in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would someday join the alliance, without specifying how or when.

Here are some of the alliance’s significant new commitments to Ukraine:

• NATO agreed that Ukraine would not need to go through a preliminary and more time-consuming process to prepare it for an invitation to the alliance, called a Membership Action Plan. Both Sweden and Finland were also allowed to skip such a process.

• The alliance is creating a NATO-Ukraine Council, a new joint body for Kyiv and the allies to deepen their relationship ahead of Ukraine’s membership. The inaugural meeting, which Mr. Zelensky is expected to attend, will take place on Wednesday in Vilnius.

• The communiqué emphasized the urgent need to continue nonlethal assistance to Ukraine, extending an existing assistance program to “help rebuild the Ukrainian security and defense sector and transition Ukraine towards full interoperability with NATO.”

• The document was unequivocal in condemning Russia, calling for Moscow to “completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its forces and equipment from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters.”

• It also condemned Russia’s “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and coercive nuclear signaling,” as well as plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Belarus.

Germany

Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany would provide 25 refurbished Leopard tanks along with 40 armored infantry fighting vehicles and two Patriot air defense missile launchers. The government in Berlin first delivered Leopards to the government in Kyiv in March.

The tanks, which are more advanced than the Soviet-era tanks that Ukraine had previously relied on in battle, are part of Germany’s latest military aid package for Ukraine, worth 700 million euros (around $770 million).

The new package is intended to help strengthen “Ukraine’s ability to persevere,” Mr. Pistorius said.

Germany, which had announced a 2.7 billion euro package in May, is the second largest donor of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Mr. Pistorius also said in Vilnius that there was no doubt that Ukraine’s future was in NATO but there were certain preconditions to be fulfilled.

France

France will give Ukraine longer-range missiles to defend itself against Russian aggression, President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday, upon arriving at the NATO summit in Vilnius.

Mr. Macron did not specify what kind of missiles would be delivered, but the French presidency later confirmed that they would be SCALP air-to-ground missiles — the French equivalent to the Storm Shadow missiles that Britain has also promised to send to Ukraine. SCALP missiles have a range of over 250 kilometers, or over 150 miles.

Mr. Macron gave no details on the timing or scope of the deliveries. “What’s important for us today is to send a message of support for Ukraine, of NATO unity and of determination that Russia cannot and must not win this war,” he said.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the office of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, welcomed Mr. Macron’s announcement.

Norway

Norway is increasing its military support to Ukraine by $240 million (2.5 billion Norwegian kroner) to a total of more than $960 million for 2023, Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store of Norway said. The country has already provided around $1.4 billion in military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

“Ukraine has an urgent need for more military support and equipment,” Mr. Store said in a statement.

On Wednesday, Norway’s government announced that it would also give 1,000 Black Hornet reconnaissance drones to Ukraine. Bjorn Arild Gram, Norway’s defense minister, said the tiny drone, which weighs 32 grams, had proven particularly useful in urban warfare in Ukraine because it is so difficult to detect.

Britain

Britain said it would send Ukraine more tank ammunition, as well as dozens of additional combat, reconnaissance and other vehicles. It is also sending the equivalent of nearly $65 million for equipment repair and, with NATO assistance, it will help set up a new rehabilitation center for wounded Ukrainian soldiers.

Australia

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia said on Wednesday that his country would provide Ukraine with 30 more Australian-made Bushmaster armored vehicles, taking the total number committed to 120.

Lara Jakes, Aurelien Breeden and Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting.