U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's attention-grabbing overseas debut may have irritated some key Republicans and alienated allies in Europe, where his statements on Ukraine and NATO went down like a lead balloon.

Hours before Vance and Zelenskyy were set to meet, a Russian drone with a high-explosive warhead hit the protective confinement shell of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Kyiv region, the Ukrainian president said. Radiation levels have not increased, Zelenskyy and the U.N. atomic agency said.