NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told The Associated Press that the military alliance has no plans to send combat troops into Ukraine amid reports that some Western countries may be considering putting boots on the ground in the war-ravaged country.

Stoltenberg said that "NATO allies are providing unprecedented support to Ukraine. We have done that since 2014 and stepped up after the full-scale invasion. But there are no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine."

Associates of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny said Monday that talks were underway shortly before his death to exchange him for a Russian imprisoned in Germany.

"Alexei Navalny could have been sitting here now, today. It's not a figure of speech," Maria Pevchikh, who lives outside Russia, said in a video statement. She said she received confirmation the talks were in the "final stages" on Feb. 15, the day before Navalny was reported dead.

More than 20 European heads of state and government and other Western officials are gathering in a show of unity for Ukraine, signaling to Russia that their support for Kyiv isn't wavering as the full-scale invasion grinds into a third year.

French President Emmanuel Macron, hosting the conference Monday in Paris, said he wants to discuss strengthening aid and ways to "give credibility to the fact that Russia cannot win in Ukraine."

Hungary's parliament is to vote Monday on ratifying Sweden's bid to join NATO, likely bringing an end to more than 18 months of delays that have frustrated the alliance as it seeks to expand in response to Russia's war in Ukraine.

Hungary's government submitted the protocols for approving Sweden's entrance to NATO in 2022, but the matter has stalled in parliament since then over opposition by governing party lawmakers. Unanimous support among all NATO members is required to admit new countries, and Hungary is the only one of the alliance's 31 members that has not given its backing.

Ukrainian troops have pulled out of a village in the east of the country, an army spokesman said Monday, as Russian forces make their advantages in manpower and ammunition tell on the battlefield at the start of the war 's third year.

The latest setback for Kyiv's soldiers was in the village of Lastochkyne, where they fell back to nearby villages in an attempt to hold the line there, Dmytro Lykhovii, a spokesman for one of the Ukrainian troop groupings, said on national television.

An active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force has died after he set himself ablaze outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., while declaring that he "will no longer be complicit in genocide."

The 25-year-old airman, Aaron Bushnell, of San Antonio, Texas, died from his injuries, the Metropolitan Police Department said Monday.

When Donald Trump's picture appeared on screen Saturday, his supporters at an election-night watch party in South Carolina burst into cheers -- convinced that his victory in yet another state primary had cemented his status as the "definitive" Republican presidential nominee.

The United States and the European Union are piling new sanctions on Russia on the eve of the second anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine and in retaliation for the death of noted Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny last week in an Arctic penal colony.

The U.S. Treasury Department plans Friday to impose more than 500 new sanctions on Russia and its war machine in the largest single tranche of penalties since Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. They come on the heels of a series of new arrests and indictments announced by the Justice Department on Thursday that target Russian businessmen, including the head of Russia's second-largest bank, and their middlemen in five separate federal cases.

The second year of Ukraine's fight against Russia's full-scale invasion brought no respite for Ukrainian soldiers or civilians.

Associated Press photographers documented the past 12 months of death and destruction, agony and grief — as well as the glimpses of joy — that are staples of life during war.

A fire engulfed two residential buildings in the eastern Spanish city of Valencia on Thursday, killing four people and leaving 19 others missing hours after the blaze started, authorities said.

The fire sent fleeing residents onto balconies where some were rescued by firefighters, officials said.