Russia accused Ukraine Sunday of launching drone attacks that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant in its western Kursk region overnight, as Ukraine celebrated 34 years since its independence.
What You Need To Know
Russia has accused Ukraine of drone strikes that sparked a fire at a nuclear power plant in the Kursk region
The fire was quickly extinguished with no injuries, though a transformer was damaged
Radiation levels remained normal. The U.N. nuclear watchdog called for protecting all nuclear facilities
Russia claimed to have shot down 95 Ukrainian drones overnight, while Ukraine intercepted 48 of 72 Russian drones
Russian officials said several power and energy facilities were targeted in the overnight strikes. The fire at the nuclear facility was quickly extinguished with no injuries reported, according to the plant’s press service on Telegram. While the attack damaged a transformer, radiation levels remained within normal ranges.
The United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said it was aware of media reports that a transformer at the plants had caught fire “due to military activity,” but hadn’t received independent confirmation. It said its director-general, Rafael Mariano Grossi, said that “every nuclear facility must be protected at all times.”
Ukraine did not immediately comment on the alleged attack.
Firefighters also responded to a blaze at the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s Leningrad region, home to a major fuel export terminal. The regional governor said approximately 10 Ukrainian drones were shot down, with debris igniting the fire.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed its air defenses intercepted 95 Ukrainian drones over Russian territory overnight into Sunday.
Russia fired 72 drones and decoys, along with a cruise missile, into Ukraine overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s air force said. Of these, 48 drones were shot down or jammed.
The incidents occurred as Ukraine marked independence day, commemorating its 1991 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy delivered remarks in a video address from Kyiv’s Independence Square, emphasizing the nation’s resolve.
“We are building a Ukraine that will have enough strength and power to live in security and peace,” Zelenskyy said, calling for a “just peace.”
“What our future will be is up to us alone,” he said, in a nod to the U.S.–Russia summit in Alaska earlier in August, which many feared would leave Ukrainian and European interests sidelined.
“And the world knows this. And the world respects this. It respects Ukraine. It perceives Ukraine as an equal,” he said.
U.S. special envoy Keith Kellogg was in attendance at independence day celebrations in Kyiv, during which Zelenskyy awarded him the Ukrainian Order of Merit, of the 1st degree.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived in Kyiv on Sunday morning for meetings with Zelenskyy.
“On this special day — Ukraine’s Independence Day — it is especially important for us to feel the support of our friends. And Canada has always stood by our side,” wrote Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff.
Norway announced significant new military aid Sunday, pledging about $695 million for air defense systems. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said Norway and Germany are jointly funding two Patriot systems, including missiles, with Norway also helping procure air defense radar.
Pope Leo XIV prayed Sunday for peace in Ukraine as he marked the country’s independence day with a special appeal during his weekly noon blessing. He said the faithful were joining Ukrainians “asking that the Lord give peace to their martyred country.”
Leo also sent a telegram to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to mark independence day, which the Ukrainian leader posted on X along with similar notes from other world leaders.
In the letter, Leo assured his prayers for all Ukrainians who are suffering, and wrote: “I implore the Lord to move the hearts of people of good will, that the clamor of arms may fall silent and give way to dialogue, opening the path to peace for the good of all.”
Meanwhile, fighting continued on the front line in eastern Ukraine, where Russia claimed Saturday that its forces had seized two villages in the Donetsk region.
Last Friday, President Donald Trump hosted Vladimir Putin for a bilateral summit in Alaska and then, on Monday, received Volodymyr Zelensky and a half-dozen European heads of state at the White House. It was the latest attempt by Trump to bring the war in Ukraine to a close through diplomatic intervention. “While difficult, peace is within reach,” he said, on Monday. “The war is going to end.” Zelensky and Putin, he went on, “are going to work something out.” Trump, famously, has made such promises before—on the campaign trail, he declared that he would end the war within twenty-four hours of taking office—but is there reason to think that it might be different this time?
To answer that, one has to return to the question of why Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place, and why the war has continued for three and a half years since then. Territory, an issue that Trump and his special envoy, Steven Witkoff, have returned to time and again, most recently when talking of unspecified “land swaps,” is actually not the primary concern for either side. “They’ve occupied some very prime territory,” Trump said, of Russia’s invasion force. “We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine.”
For Putin, lopping off Ukrainian territory—and, in the process, levelling Ukrainian cities with artillery barrages and aerial bombs—is a way to achieve his ultimate goal: a loyal and neutered Ukraine that does not threaten Russia and is free of undue Western influence. This aim is connected to a wider set of concerns that Putin calls the “root causes” of the war, which touch on a range of issues: language, history, and identity in modern-day Ukraine, and also the treaties and deployment of Western military forces undergirding security in Europe.
As Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, has been noting since the beginning of the war, in Putin’s understanding, if Ukraine is “ours,” then it doesn’t so much matter who controls which city or where its de-facto borders are drawn; but if Ukraine remains “theirs,” then it must be steadily destroyed, until Kyiv and its Western backers realize the folly of their stubbornness and acquiesce to the former scenario. “Putin has considered war to be the least desirable option from the outset,” Stanovaya told me. “He’d rather make a deal, but only in line with his maximalist conditions, which, neither then nor now, is he ready to rethink. And so, according to his logic, he is forced to continue to wage war.”
On the land question, Putin’s position appears to be that Ukraine should withdraw from the parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, in the country’s east, that it still controls. But this is no small amount of territory: Ukrainian forces hold thirty per cent of the Donetsk region, including its most fortified strongholds, which Russia has not been able to seize despite years of constant assaults. It’s unclear exactly what territorial concessions Putin and Trump have discussed, but Trump told reporters in Alaska that “those are points that we have largely agreed on.” Afterward, a Ukrainian diplomatic source told me, “People were concerned Trump might express some willingness or even demands on the territorial issue.” But the fact that, in Washington, Trump didn’t pressure Zelensky on the point means that “Trump didn’t go for a ‘dirty deal’ with Putin.”
Putin wants the entirety of the Donbas, as the Donetsk and Luhansk regions together are known, for two reasons—neither of which relates to the intrinsic qualities or benefits of the land, per se. The first reason essentially pertains to image and propaganda. In February, 2022, when Putin announced the start of the so-called “special military operation,” the supposed need to protect the Russian-speaking populations of the Donbas was his most precise, clearly articulated war aim. Since then, the bulk of the Russian war effort—and where its Army has seen the majority of its estimated million casualties—has been focussed on the Donbas. If Russia emerges from the war, effectively, with control of the region, Putin will have an easier time selling the idea of victory and the virtue of the sacrifice required to achieve it. The dual propaganda and repression machines could probably keep things stable at home for Putin in nearly any scenario, but all segments of Russian society—veterans returning from the war zone, families who have lost husbands or fathers in the war, once globally connected economic élites—will be all the less likely to express even tentative displeasure or doubt if the Donbas ends up in Russian hands.
The second reason that Putin wants control over the Donbas is that Russian forces will be in constant striking distance of other Ukrainian population centers, in particular cities such as Dnipro and Kharkiv, so that both the threat and the means of a renewed Russian invasion will be ever present. A perpetually insecure Ukraine, Putin believes, is one more amenable to Russian interests and liable to be manipulated or suborned by Moscow.
Zelensky faces the same pressures, but in reverse. I reached Balazs Jarabik, a political analyst and a former longtime European diplomat, in Kyiv, who spoke of the combined impediments to Zelensky agreeing to such a scheme: namely, the political (“the Donbas is where Ukrainians see this war as having started, in 2014, and losing the entirety of it would be a big blow to morale”) and the military (“after Donbas, there is basically just open steppe without any natural defensive lines”). Zelensky himself has cited a clause in the Ukrainian constitution that prevents any leader from ceding or transferring any of the country’s territory.
Still, this would presumably not be the final barrier to a deal, were a realistic one to materialize. Ukraine could, for example, withdraw its troops from particular areas without making any formal territorial concessions, creating an unrecognized but indefinite line of separation, like the one that followed the Korean armistice, in 1953, or the division of Berlin, during the Cold War. However, such a thing could be considered only if Ukraine felt that its long-term security was assured. “If the choice was, say, NATO or Donbas, Ukraine would obviously choose NATO,” Jarabik said. (Not that this option is on the table: Trump reiterated again this week that there will be “no going into NATO by Ukraine.”)
The question of land, then, is a proxy for more essential issues for both Russia and Ukraine: Ukraine’s future orientation as a state, and its ability to protect and defend that sovereignty, or the possibility that it remains perpetually exposed and vulnerable. Putin’s list of “root causes” presupposes changes to Ukrainian politics and society, a process that Putin appears to expect Trump to force on Kyiv as part of a peace settlement. In Alaska, Putin achieved partial success on this point. On one hand, he convinced Trump that the war can end only by addressing Russia’s strategic concerns, hence Trump’s move away from calling for an immediate ceasefire to advocating for a long-term peace agreement. (The ceasefire, which Ukraine and its European backers favor, could be done quickly and without taking into account Russia’s wider set of demands; a more lasting treaty can be achieved only when exactly that has happened.) On the other hand, Trump seems disinclined to serve as Putin’s proxy in achieving Russia’s wish list in full. “Putin would like Trump to force its conditions on Ukraine,” Stanovaya said. “But Trump appears to be saying that, on matters of Ukraine’s future borders, laws, and constitution, Putin and Zelensky will have to come to some arrangement between themselves.” That is a more complicated, less desirable situation for Putin, who sees Zelensky as an illegitimate figure—Putin’s preferred interlocutor has always been in Washington, not Kyiv.
In one of the largest overnight strikes since the war began, Russia unleashed some 614 drones, ballistic and cruise missiles across Ukraine, killing one, injuring dozens and destroying an American-owned electronics company less than an hour from two NATO borders, officials confirmed Thursday morning.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy said the strike on the private U.S. company, which involved “several” cruise missiles, was “very telling” following President Donald Trump’s attempts to force Moscow to end its invasion.
Black smoke rises from the electronics manufacturing company as firefighters continue to extinguish the fire after the Russian army hit a large American company producing civilian electronics with two missiles in Mukachevo, Zakarpattia region of Ukraine on Aug. 21, 2025. (Zakarpattia Regional Military Administration / Handout/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Last night, the Russian army set one of its insane anti-records,” Zelenskyy said. “They targeted civilian infrastructure facilities, residential buildings, and our people.
“Several cruise missiles were lobbed against an American-owned enterprise in Zakarpattia,” he continued, describing the company as “a regular civilian business, supported by American investment, producing everyday items like coffee machines.”
“And yet, it was also a target for the Russians. This is very telling,” Zelenskyy added.
The American business is believed to be Flex Ltd., whose corporate headquarters is in Austin, Texas but which has business locations across the globe.
Some 15 people were apparently injured in the strike on the city of Mukachevo in the Zakarpattia region – which sits just 30 miles from two NATO nations, Hungary and Slovakia.
A residential building destroyed after a Russian bombing, with at least four people trapped under the rubble, in the city of Kostiantynivka, Ukraine on Aug. 21, 2025. (Diego Herrera Carcedo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Flex Ltd. did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions.
The overnight strike included 574 drones and 40 missiles, and hit numerous locations across Ukraine.
The White House also did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s questions regarding the president’s reaction to the strike that targeted a U.S. company, though on Tuesday he said, “It’s possible that [Putin] doesn’t want to make a deal.”
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks,” he added.
NATO leaders have repeatedly questioned Putin’s willingness to engage in good-faith negotiations as well as his desire to end his war ambitions – questions that gained little clarity even after Trump’s in-person meeting with the Kremlin chief in Alaska on Friday.
(L-R) Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. President Donald Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prepare to depart after a group photo prior to meeting at the White House on Aug. 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
France – which has become a leading player backing Ukraine – on Thursday reiterated this point, and in a statement to Fox News Digital, said despite Russian claims that they are “ready to negotiate,” the overnight strikes suggest otherwise.
“These attacks, the most massive in a month, illustrate Russia’s lack of any genuine intention to engage seriously in peace talks,” a spokesperson with the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs told Fox News Digital.
“France reiterates its support for President Trump’s initiative in favor of a just and lasting peace and will continue to work with determination alongside Ukraine and its partners,” the spokesperson added.
Caitlin McFall is a Reporter at Fox News Digital covering Politics, U.S. and World news.
Russia targeted Ukraine overnight with 574 drones and 40 missiles, the Ukrainian Air Force said. Most of the weapons were intercepted by Ukraine’s air defenses, but the massive assault was far from unusual, and officials said at least one person was killed and 15 injured.
Ukrainian officials said the Russian attack hit energy infrastructure, private homes, an American electronics factory — where President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the 15 injuries were sustained, and a kindergarten.
“Last night, the Russian army set one of its insane anti-records. They struck civilian infrastructure, residential buildings, and our people,” Zelenskyy said in a message posted on social media. He called the electronics plant an “American investment” and an “ordinary civilian enterprise” producing “everyday items as coffee machines.”
“This is also a target for the Russians. Very telling. The fire is still being extinguished at the enterprise. As of now, 15 people are known to have been affected by this strike. All of them have been provided with the necessary assistance,” he said.
Emergency services and firefighting teams work at the scene after a Russian missile attack hit a U.S.-owned factory in Zakarpattia, Ukraine, Aug. 21, 2025.
Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu/Getty
Alluding to President Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal to end the war, including the bilateral summit between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin just a week earlier, Zelenskyy condemned Moscow for launching the new strike “as if nothing had changed at all. As if there were no efforts by the world to stop this war.”
“A response is needed,” he added. “So far, there has been no signal from Moscow that they are really going to engage in meaningful negotiations and end this war. Pressure is needed. Strong sanctions, strong tariffs.”
There has been a lot of talk — outside of Ukraine — about a peace deal amid Mr. Trump’s ramped-up diplomacy. But inside Ukraine, people continue to live and die in a war zone more than three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. Many in the country, like their president, simply don’t believe that Putin really wants to end the war. They think he’s just playing along with the ceasefire narrative to avoid angering Mr. Trump.
And in the meantime, Putin’s army continues to expand its massive seizure of territory in eastern Ukraine. The Russian defense ministry claimed Thursday that forces had captured yet another village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
A map of Ukraine shows the percentage of different regions under Russian control, displayed in the Oval Office during President Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders, on Aug. 18, 2025.
BBC News
Major Taras Berezovets of the Ukrainian forces told CBS News that even if Putin were to agree to a ceasefire, the Russian leader simply should not be trusted.
“Absolutely not,” Berezovets told CBS News. “He’s a cheater, he’s a criminal… and he would never accept the fact that independent Ukraine still exists.”
That is why Ukraine wants security guarantees — a promise of protection from the U.S. and its NATO allies in the event Russia should invade again after any eventual ceasefire is implemented.
President Trump has been adamant that such a guarantee would not involve U.S. boots on the ground, and Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that Europe would have to bear most of the costs.
But getting all sides, including Russia, to agree to those security guarantees may be next to impossible. After his meeting with Putin, Mr. Trump met with Zelenskyy and European leaders in Washington to hold separate talks.
But Moscow has downplayed the prospects of a Putin-Zelenskyy summit any time soon, and officials have said Russia should be included in any looming discussions on security guarantees for Ukraine.
Holly Williams is a CBS News senior foreign correspondent based in the network’s CBS London bureau. Williams joined CBS News in July 2012, and has more than 25 years of experience covering major news events and international conflicts across Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
As world leaders try to end Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine, humanitarians from New Hampshire just back from the conflict zone say the people there do not think the fighting will finish anytime soon.
“Whatever the conversations are, they all say it doesn’t matter unless we have an entirely free and independent Ukraine,” said Susan Mathison, cofounder of Common Man for Ukraine. “They’re not interested in a land swap.”
Mathison and her team arrived in Boston Wednesday night after spending 11 days delivering food and supplies to villages just 8 miles from the front lines.
“Common Man for Ukraine” is a volunteer team in partner with the Plymouth Rotary Foundation, a nonprofit out of New Hampshire. They deliver humanitarian aid by the truckload. That includes food but also trauma counseling, to Ukrainian orphans, displaced children and families struggling to survive the war against Russia.
“We hear air raid sirens,” said Mathison. “We know about the drones overhead.”
They know their lives are at risk every time they go and that they could be a target.
“Everything we have in those trucks is a hot commodity in Ukraine,” she said. “Sleeping bags, generators, food. That could get into the wrong hands and go into the black market.”
After volunteers spent the past week delivering aid to the war-torn country, humanitarians from New Hampshire-based Common Man for Ukraine are back in the U.S.
The organization raises funds and sends money to Ukraine throughout the year, but often goes in person to monitor that it’s all going to the right places.
On this trip alone, 46,000 pounds of food was delivered.
“It’s very important that we know what Ukrainians need, when they need it, and we’re providing the right things,” she said.
This was the group’s 13th trip to Ukraine since 2022. They’ve got a 14th planned in December.
Russia launched its largest attack of the month against Ukraine while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with U.S. President Donald Trump and European leaders at the White House.
The attack also comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska last Friday, during which Putin refused an immediate ceasefire and demanded that Ukraine give up its eastern Donetsk region in exchange for an end to the conflict that began with a February 2022 invasion by Moscow. Trump later said he had spoken on the phone with Putin about arrangements for a meeting between the Russian president and Zelenskyy.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles into Ukraine on Monday night and into Tuesday, but that 230 drones and six missiles were intercepted or suppressed. The air force reported that 40 drones and four missiles struck across 16 locations, and debris was said to have fallen on three sites.
Russia launched its largest attack of the month against Ukraine on Monday night.(Getty Images)
“While hard work to advance peace was underway in Washington, D.C. … Moscow continued to do the opposite of peace: more strikes and destruction,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X. “This once again demonstrates how critical it is to end the killing, achieve a lasting peace, and ensure robust security guarantees.”
Energy infrastructure in the central Poltava region was a target of the strikes, according to Ukraine’s Energy Ministry. The casualty figures were not immediately released by officials.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 270 drones and 10 missiles into Ukraine.(Getty Images)
“As a result of the attack, large-scale fires broke out,” the ministry said in a statement.
Oil refining and gas facilities were attacked, the ministry added, saying the strikes were the latest “systematic terrorist attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which is a direct violation of international humanitarian law.”
The attack was the largest since Russia launched 309 drones and eight missiles into Ukraine on July 31, according to the air force.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down 23 Ukrainian drones on Monday night and into Tuesday morning.
The attack was the largest since Russia launched 309 drones and eight missiles into Ukraine on July 31.(Getty Images)
Both sides have been targeting infrastructure, including oil facilities.
Zelenskyy had criticized Moscow for earlier strikes on Monday ahead of his meeting at the White House in which at least 14 people were killed and dozens more were injured.
“The Russian war machine continues to destroy lives despite everything. Putin will commit demonstrative killings to maintain pressure on Ukraine and Europe, as well as to humiliate diplomatic efforts. That is precisely why we are seeking assistance to put an end to the killings,” he wrote Monday morning on X.
As armies scramble to learn the lessons of the Russia-Ukraine war, one question looms above all: Have drones replaced traditional weapons such as tanks and artillery?
For NATO, the implications are more than tactical. As the alliance struggles to rebuild its long-neglected armies, it faces tough decisions about allocating scarce money and industrial capacity. If robots are the future, then doesn’t it make sense to build $500 drones instead of $5 million tanks?
Not so fast, warn some experts. Replacing old-fashioned firepower with a purely drone force would be a blunder.
“There are several reasons why it would be a mistake for NATO forces to rely heavily on massed small UAS [unmanned aerial systems] and long range OWA [one-way attack] drones to replace traditional weapons systems in pursuit of improved lethality and thus deterrence against future Russian aggression,” argues Justin Bronk, a researcher at the British think tank Royal United Services Institute, in a recent essay.
Rather than exploiting Russia’s weaknesses, a drone-centric NATO could be playing to Russia’s strengths.
“Russian forces currently field the most formidable” counter-UAS capabilities in the world, according to Bronk. In addition to jammers, modified infantry weapons and short-range air defense systems, Russian forces have become accustomed to using anti-drone measures such as netting to deflect unmanned aerial vehicles and armored cages to protect vehicles.
“In most cases, only a small fraction of the huge volumes of drones launched by Ukrainian forces reach their targets, and a still smaller proportion achieve decisive damage when they do,” Bronk wrote.
Indeed, one reason why Ukrainian drones have achieved success at all is the presence of legacy firepower that constrains Russia’s ability to maneuver and to concentrate counter-UAS assets.
“This attrition from UAS has been occurring in the context of a Russian force that is still constrained by minefields and forced to disperse by Ukrainian artillery, GMLRS [Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems] and ATACMS [Army Tactical Missile Systems], Storm Shadow/SCALP cruise missiles and glide bombs, Bronk explained. “If NATO forces were to pursue massed UAS at the expense of rebuilding stocks of these traditional fires, Russian forces would find it significantly easier to mitigate UAS lethality than they have up to now in Ukraine.”
Ukrainian soldiers from an air defense unit of the 59th Brigade fire at Russian strike drones in Dnipropetrovsk region, Ukraine, on Aug. 10. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
The impact of drones in Ukraine has been contradictory. On the one hand, they dominate the battlefield, with hordes of omnipresent attack and reconnaissance UAVs paralyzing maneuver and forcing troops and vehicles to remain within cover and fortification. Most recently, waves of unjammable Russian first-person view drones guided by fiber-optic cables have devastated Ukrainian supply lines.
Yet despite enormous effort to innovate and manufacture drones, Ukraine has only been able to limit Russian advances — but not stop them. Advancing behind saturation bombardments by artillery, glide bombs and drones, Russian offensives are succeeding in capturing ground. The gains are meager and the cost is staggering. But the Kremlin doesn’t care about losses, and Ukraine simply lacks sufficient quantities of manpower and traditional weapons to defeat the attackers.
“Ukraine has achieved very impressive defensive results against larger Russian forces, but has not managed to retain the strategic initiative or operational momentum despite deploying millions of UAS that are constantly iteratively developed by a system honed by multiple years of desperate fighting,” Bronk wrote.
The best evidence is that Ukraine is clamoring for legacy weapons such as ATACMS and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, rocket launchers, guided artillery shells and anti-tank guided missiles.
“When available, high-end ATGMs [Anti-Tank Guided Missiles], anti-tank BONUS artillery rounds and regular artillery are still prized by many Ukrainian commanders for countering Russian attempts to break through the frontlines, because they are far more responsive and more reliably able to knock out vehicles and suppress massing infantry than FPV drones,” wrote Bronk.
While UAVs have inflicted significant casualties on Russian forces (as have Russian drones on Ukrainian troops), Bronk sees drones at their most valuable as enablers for traditional forms of firepower.
For example, cheap decoy or kamikaze drones can saturate air defense radars and force the defender to expend interceptors that would otherwise target missiles and rockets.
Bronk favors a NATO focus on glide bombs. Though far more expensive than drones, they are far cheaper than guided missiles: A Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM, costs around $25,000, compared to a million-dollar ATACMS rocket. Glide bombs “destroy armored vehicles, fighting positions, supply dumps, warehouses, factories and command posts. They are easy to manufacture at scale with existing factories and multiple bombs can be delivered by a single jet with a targeting pod on each sortie.”
Beyond their battlefield value, Bronk sees glide bombs as a deterrent against Russian aggression. By threatening Russian air defenses, they present Moscow with the prospect of operating at the mercy of NATO airpower.
Rather than playing catch-up with Russia and Ukraine in drone warfare, NATO should use drones to augment its existing strengths, Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Defense News. These include superior precision strike capabilities, better-trained personnel and the ability to conduct joint operations.
“Those are the advantages that are likely to prove much more significant than being second- or third-mover in the drone fight,” Kofman said.
Ultimately, those nations that can integrate drones with conventional weapons will have the advantage over those that rely on masses of drones at the expense of traditional firepower.
“Fundamentally, it is far technically and tactically easier to counter a force that primarily relies on massed, cheap FPV and OWA drones for its primary lethality than it is to counter well-employed airpower, long range fires, armor, artillery and mortars within a professional joint force,” Bronk concluded.
Washington — President Trump is working to coordinate a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which would be the first face-to-face interaction between the two leaders since Russia invaded Ukrainemore than three years ago.
Asked about arranging the meeting on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said on Fox & Friends that he would let Putin and Zelenskyy meet first before getting involved himself, saying “they haven’t been exactly best friends.”
“I hope President Putin is going to be good, and if he’s not, that’s going to be a rough situation,” Mr. Trump said. He noted that he’s hopeful Zelenskyy will “do what he has to do,” saying he has to “show some flexibility also.”
Mr. Trump’s efforts come one day after an extraordinary series of meetings at the White House between the U.S. president, Zelenskyy and European leaders. In a display of unity, Zelenskyy and the European leaders stressed the importance of security guarantees in a peace deal, which Mr. Trump said could come with U.S. coordination.
President Trump shakes hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting in the Oval Office at the White House on Aug. 18, 2025, in Washington, D.C.
Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
Attention has now turned to a possible summit between Putin and Zelenskyy. After Monday’s meetings, Mr. Trump said he called Putin to set up the meeting, and he “picked it up very happily,” despite the late hour in Russia. Mr. Trump called it a “very good call.”
“I told him that we’re going to set up a meeting with President Zelenskyy, and you and he will meet, and then after that meeting, if everything works out OK, I’ll meet and we’ll wrap it up,” Mr. Trump said. He added that it takes “two to tango,” and that “they have to have somewhat of a relationship, otherwise, we’re just wasting a lot of time.”
Zelenskyy told CBS News shortly after leaving the White House that a date had not been set to meet with Putin, although German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it could be within the next two weeks. In a post on X Tuesday, Zelenskyy called the talks in Washington “truly a significant step toward ending the war and ensuring the security of Ukraine and our people.”
“We are already working on the concrete content of the security guarantees,” Zelenskyy said. “Today, we continue coordination at the level of leaders. There will be discussions, and we are preparing the relevant formats.”
A Russian spokesperson would only say that high-level talks would take place, but would not confirm that Putin would be involved.
Mr. Trump, who met with Putin in Alaska last week, expressed urgency around the timing of the next meeting, suggesting that waiting too long would result in thousands of deaths. In what appeared to be a hot mic moment Monday, Mr. Trump told French President Emmanuel Macron that Putin “wants to make a deal for me.”
The president outlined on Fox that he has been surprised that Zelenskyy and Putin are “getting along a little bit better than I thought,” adding that “they’re the ones that have to call the shots.”
“We’re going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks, that I can tell you, and we’re going to see where it all goes,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s possible that he doesn’t want to make a deal.”
Meanwhile, security guarantees for Ukraine emerged as a key issue during Monday’s meetings, with Zelenskyy calling them a “starting point towards ending the war.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday that the U.S. will work with European and other allies to provide security guarantees for Ukraine after the war, although he did not provide specifics. And Macron said discussions on what the U.S. is willing to provide could begin as soon as Tuesday.
On the security guarantees, Mr. Trump said the European leaders are “willing to put people on the ground,” and that “we’re willing to help them with things, especially, probably if you could talk about by air because there’s nobody has the kind of stuff we have.” But the president added that “I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”
“There will be some form of security,” Mr. Trump said. “It can’t be NATO, because that was a — that’s just not something that would ever, ever happen.”
Fox News’ Jacqui Heinrich outlines what the plan apparently was as of this morning during the pre-meeting with Zelenskyy at the Ukrainian embassy:
1) I’m told there’s no expectation that today wraps up with a date on the calendar for a trilateral summit – but today would be a success if Zelenskyy had a realistic discussion about territorial concessions
2) Nobody expects Zelenskyy to take Putin’s first version of the map back to his country, but he needs to talk about what he can let go and what is critical to keep.
2a. – Getting clarity on security guarantees and what that looks like will make it easier for Zelenskyy to sell that back home
2b. – Asked about what that means for the timeline, I’m told the US feels there is political energy behind this, a light at the end of the tunnel, and wants to get it done now – but knows it won’t be instant. More like “weeks not months” – and Ukraine understands this
3) US and Europeans have “gently” made suggestions on territory, but they are also aware that Zelenskyy has to take this back and massage it through his own system – “gotta come back with a counteroffer”
3a. – I asked how Zelenskyy is approaching that given Ukraine’s constitutional requirement of a national referendum for territorial changes – I’m told the the general attitude is “that’s a you problem” – as in, up to Zelenskyy to figure out and handle
3b. – On territory with minerals being under Russian control, basically if America has a stake in land, it is a security in an of itself – its in their interest to make that work
4) Europeans believe the security guarantees are a very very big deal, and want to protect and preserve it – which is part of why they are all eager to be here today.
4a. – They also want to help Zelenskyy manage this high-wire act because “the risk factor of Zelenskyy putting his foot in his mouth is significant”
5) The discussion on security guarantees won’t produce full security plan today- but they want clear next steps to work on, “a commitment in principle from the coalition of the willing, the US, hammering out alongside Ukrainians”
5a. – Some awareness that the US should legislate this, make sure it lasts into future administrations
5b. – Also the WH sees Putin’s acceptance of security guarantees as important – their attitude is “Now we have to put more meat on the bone”
6) Today it is important to demonstrate unity between Europeans, US, and Ukraine – that would define success
7) Neither Ukrainians or Americans want today to fail
Andrea Mitchell also reports that European leaders also coached Zelenskyy ahead of time on how to kiss Trump’s ass:
The presidents of Russia and Ukraine may finally meet to discuss peace after 3½ years of war, President Trump said Monday, hosting European leaders at the White House in a push to resolve the conflict.
But it is unclear whether the Kremlin has agreed to the proposal, telling reporters only that Russian President Vladimir Putin would consider “raising the level” of negotiations between Russia’s and Ukraine’s representatives.
Trump proposed that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet one-on-one “at a location to be determined,” taking a call with the Russian leader in the middle of a high-stakes meeting with Zelensky and his European counterparts.
“After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself,” Trump wrote on social media. “Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years.”
The president’s statement came after European leaders urged Trump to “put pressure” on Russia, after his meeting with Putin in Alaska last week sparked widespread fears over the fate of U.S. support for security on the continent.
The meeting had a historic flavor, with six European heads of government, the NATO secretary general and the president of the European Commission all converging on Washington for discussions with the president.
Trump first met with Zelensky in the Oval Office, striking an affable tone after their last, disastrous meeting in the room in February. This time, Trump emphasized his “love” for the Ukrainian people and his commitment to provide security guarantees for Kyiv in an ultimate peace settlement with Russia.
Zelensky offered only praise and gratitude to Trump, telling reporters that they had their “best” meeting yet.
But an expanded meeting with Zelensky and the chancellor of Germany, the presidents of France and Finland, the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Italy, and the heads of NATO and the European Commission hinted at a more challenging road ahead for the burgeoning peace effort.
President Trump speaks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left foreground, as French President Emmanuel Macron listens during a meeting at the White House on Aug. 18, 2025.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
“The next steps ahead are the more complicated ones now,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. “The path is open — you opened it, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations, and to be honest, we would all like to see a ceasefire, at the latest, from the next meeting on.”
“I can’t imagine the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz added. “So let’s work on that. And let’s put pressure on Russia.”
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, sat sternly throughout the start of the meeting before echoing Merz’s call.
“Your idea to ask for a truce, a ceasefire, or at least to stop the killings,” Macron said, “is a necessity, and we all support this idea.”
Trump had been in agreement with his European counterparts on the necessity of a ceasefire for months. Zelensky first agreed to one in March. But Putin has refused, pressing Russian advantages on the battlefield, and in Anchorage on Friday, he convinced Trump to drop his calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.
“All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace. Maybe something like that could happen — as of this moment, it’s not happening,” Trump said at the meeting. “But President Zelensky and President Putin can talk a little bit more about that.”
“I don’t know that it’s necessary,” Trump added. “You can do it through the war. But I like the ceasefire from another standpoint — you immediately stop the killing.”
The European leaders all emphasized to Trump that they share his desire for peace. But the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called for a “just” peace, and Zelensky would not engage publicly with reporters on Putin’s central demand: a surrender of vast swaths of Ukrainian territory to Russian control.
Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupying the Crimean peninsula in a stealth operation and funding an attack on the eastern region of Donbas using proxy forces. But he launched a full-scale invasion of the entire country in 2022, leading to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.
In a hot mic moment, before the media were ushered out of the expanded meeting with European leaders, Trump told Macron that he believes the Russian president and former KGB officer would agree to a peace deal because of their personal relationship.
He “wants to make a deal for me,” he said, “as crazy as it sounds.”
‘Article 5-like’ guarantees
European leaders said that detailed U.S. security guarantees — for Ukraine specifically, and more broadly for Europe — were at the top of the agenda for Monday’s meetings, including the prospect of U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce any future peace settlement.
Asked whether U.S. forces would be involved, Trump did not rule it out, stating, “We’ll be talking about that.”
“When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help,” he said in the Oval Office. “It’s going to be good. They are first line of defense, because they’re there — they are Europe. But we’re going to help them out, also. We’ll be involved.”
Von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised the Trump administration for discussing what it called “Article 5-like” security guarantees for Ukraine, referencing a provision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaton charter that states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.
But the provision also provides countries in the alliance with broad discretion on whether to participate in a military response to an attack on a fellow member.
Starmer and Macron have expressed a willingness for months to send British and French troops to Ukraine. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that Moscow would oppose the deployment of NATO troops to the country as “provocative” and “reckless,” creating a potential rift in the negotiations.
President Trump walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and White House protocol chief Monica Crowley in the White House on Aug. 18, 2025.
(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)
Despite the gulf between Europe and Russia, Trump expressed hope throughout the day that he could schedule a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky.
He planned on calling Putin shortly after European leaders left the White House, he told reporters, only to interrupt the meeting to call the Russian leader with the proposal for bilateral talks.
Trump’s team floated inviting Zelensky to attend the negotiations in Alaska on Friday, and Zelensky has said he is willing to participate in a trilateral meeting. He repeated his interest to Trump on Monday and asked him to attend.
It is unclear whether Moscow will agree to a summit involving Zelensky in any capacity. Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Russian officials said that conditions weren’t right for direct talks between Putin and the Ukrainian president. The Russian leader has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy and has tried to have him assassinated on numerous occasions.
Quiet on territorial ‘swaps’
In the Oval Office, a Fox News reporter asked Zelensky whether he was “prepared to keep sending Ukrainian troops to their deaths,” or whether he would “agree to redraw the maps” instead. The Ukrainian president demurred.
“We live under each day attacks,” Zelensky responded. “We need to stop this war, to stop Russia. And we need the support — American and European partners.”
Trump and his team largely adopted Putin’s position Friday that Russia should be able to keep the Ukrainian territory it has occupied by force — and possibly even more of Donetsk, which is part of the Donbas region and remains in Ukrainian control — in exchange for an end to the fighting. But European officials were silent on the idea on Monday.
The Ukrainian Constitution prohibits the concession of territory without the support of a public referendum, and polls indicate that 3 in 4 Ukrainians oppose giving up land in an attempt to end the war.
Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy for special missions, said Sunday that Putin agreed to pass legislation through the Kremlin that would guarantee an end to wars of conquest in Ukraine, or elsewhere in Europe.
But Russia has made similar commitments before.
In 1994, the United States and Britain signed on to a agreement in Budapest with Ukraine and Russia that ostensibly guaranteed security for Kyiv and vowed to honor Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.
President Donald Trump vowed to take action against voting by mail, which he said makes the United States an outlier.
“We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting,” Trump wrote in an Aug. 18 Truth Social post.
His post echoed grievances about mail-in voting he had aired days earlier in his interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15 in Alaska, Trump told Hannity that Putin said the 2020 U.S. presidential election was “rigged” because of mail-in voting. It wasn’t. Trump lost that election. Officials in his own administration told him that.
Hours after his post, Trump slightly softened his language during a White House meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“And do you know that we’re the only country in the world — I believe,I may be wrong — but just about the only country in the world that uses (mail-in voting) because of what’s happened, massive fraud all over the place,” Trump said.
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Mail-in voting provides more opportunity for fraud than in-person voting researchers say, but it’s still rare, and election officials have safeguards in place.
Trump said during his Aug. 18 White House remarks that his administration is preparing an executive order “to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt.”
We asked the White House for evidence to support Trump’s statement about other countries and received no response to that question.
Data compiled by a Sweden-based organization that advocates for democracy globally found in an October 2024 report found that 34 countries or territories allow mail-in voting, which it refers to as “postal voting.”
Dozens of countries allow at least some mail-in voting
The International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that of the 34 countries or territories, 12 allow all voters to vote by mail and in 22 permit only some voters to vote this way.
“Europe has the largest number of countries that make in-country postal voting available to all or some voters,” the report said.
No two countries have exactly the same postal voting system, said Annika Silva-Leander, the organization’s North America head.
Silva-Leander noted some differences:
Ballot tracking: Ballot tracking lets voters and election officials track the ballots throughout the voting process to reduce fraud. Although that is common in the U.S., many countries don’t have it.
Different state systems: Many countries have the same postal voting system for the entire nation; in the U.S., the system differs from state to state. The majority of states allow voting by mail, including red, blue and battleground states.
Mailing ballots to all voters is unusual: In most countries, postal voting supplements polling stations, but some U.S. states such as Washington state rely largely on postal voting.
Ballot curing: This is a U.S. process that lets voters fix a problem, such as forgetting to sign the envelope, after casting their ballot. This process is not available in most countries.
The U.S. has had voting by mail since the Civil War. Voting by mail also has a long history across the globe.
Australia introduced postal voting more than a century ago, Graeme Orr, an expert on international electoral law at the University of Queensland in Australia, previously told PolitiFact.
All Canadians are eligible to use mail-in voting, said York University associate professor Cary Wu, who co-wrote a 2024 paper about the effect of Trump’s anti-mail voting messaging on Canadians’ views of mail voting.
“Voting by mail has long been a vital component of the democratic process in Canada,” Wu said.
Although the option of submitting a ballot by mail was extended to all Canadian voters in 1993, it was not commonly used in general elections before the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, on-demand postal voting in Britain was part of a wider modernization in electoral administration in the early 2000s, according to a 2021 paper by United Kingdom researchers. Postal voting’s expansion was driven largely by a desire to increase turnout. Using data from the 2019 British Election Study, researchers found that older voters and people with disabilities were more likely to opt for postal voting’s convenience.
Volunteers prepare postal votes during the German national election in Munich, Germany, Feb. 23, 2025. (AP)
States set mail-in voting laws
In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes” and must do what the president tells them.
UCLA election law professor Rick Hasen wrote on his blog that Trump’s statement is “wrong and dangerous.”
“The Constitution does not give the President any control over federal elections,” Hasen wrote, adding that federal courts have recognized those limits.
The Constitution’s Article 1, Section 4 says that the regulation of elections is the power of the states.
“The President plays literally no role in elections, and that’s by design of the founders,” said David Becker, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research.
Despite often criticizing voting by mail, Trump himself occasionally cast a mail ballot, and in 2024 Trump invited Republicans to cast mail ballots.
We asked the White House for details about the forthcoming executive order he described, including whether it seeks to entirely ban mail-in voting. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields did not address that question but said Trump wants to require voter ID and prevent “cheating through lax and incompetent voting laws in states like California and New York.” There is no evidence of widespread cheating in California and New York, two of the most populous states that consistently elect Democrats for president. Most states require voter ID, although the rules vary.
Our ruling
Trump said, “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting.”
Trump didn’t explain his evidence and hours later softened his language when he said he “may be wrong.”
In 2024, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance found that 34 countries or territories allow postal voting, or mail-in voting. For example, Australia has had mail-in voting for a century, and all Canadians are eligible to vote by mail.
In a more cordial affair than their last Oval Office meeting, President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sat down Aug. 18 at the White House to discuss how to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
The talks, which included a second meeting with seven European and NATO leaders, took place three days after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska. Since meeting with Putin, Trump has talked about reaching a peace deal saying he no longer thinks Ukraine “needs a ceasefire” and noting that there needs to be concessions on both sides.
Here are the meeting’s top lines, fact-checked.
Mail-in ballots are fraud? For a meeting about a war in Ukraine, mail-in ballots in the U.S. got a surprising spotlight.
Following a social media post earlier in the day in which Trump called for getting rid of mail-in voting — a voting practice he had embraced — Trump called mail-in ballots “corrupt” and “a fraud” and promised to end mail-in voting.
Trump has spread falsehoods about voting by mail for the last decade. Mail-in voting provides more opportunity for fraud than in-person voting, but it’s still rare, and election officials have safeguards in place. Around 94% of registered voters live in states that have some version of ballot tracking, reducing the probability of fraud.
Trump had a hand in deals that have recently eased conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand; Israel and Iran; and India and Pakistan, although some of those countries’ leaders dispute his role. The U.S. was also involved in a peace deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda that experts said is significant but remains shaky. In other conflicts, there is little evidence of war brewing or solutions on the table. On Aug. 8, after our fact-check’s publication, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan joined Trump in the White House to sign a joint peace declaration after nearly 40 years of conflict.
One “one” war left? As Trump spoke about how difficult it’s been to end the Russia-Ukraine conflict, he said that, “with all of the wars that I got involved in, we only have this one left.”
But his comment notably ignores Israel’s nearly two-year war with Hamas in Gaza that started on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel and killed around 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage. Since then, the war has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, including about 18,000 children and minors, according to Gazan health statistics. (Gaza’s numbers do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.) Hunger has surged in Gaza as the enclave has been largely cut off from aid.
Trump’s remark also comes a day after hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to protest the war. The demonstrators called for the release of the remaining hostages amid Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu’s plan to launch a ground invasion into Gaza City. Trump weighed in on Truth Social, saying that “we will only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed!!!”
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$350 billion for Ukraine doesn’t add up. Trump said he thought the U.S. had given Ukraine “over $300 (billion)” or “$350 billion worth of equipment and money.” This is misleading.
U.S. appropriations for Ukraine total about $184.8 billion, as of March 2025. A White House spokesperson told PolitiFact that Trump’s figure included direct funding to Ukraine and indirect economic costs, such as war-related inflation, rising fertilizer costs and lost trade because of sanctions on Russia.
Trump’s district dining anecdote. In a pivot to Washington, D.C., crime, Trump said the district went from “the most unsafe place anywhere” to a place where people are going out to dinner again. He credited this to his Aug. 11 federal takeover of the district’s police, saying he’s made the area safer in a matter of days.
This ismisleading. The district experienced a sharp rise in crime during the COVID-19 pandemic, but crime rates have continued to decline since. When it comes to dining out, reservation data for the district’s restaurants shows a decline in diners since Trump summoned the National Guard and took over the police force.
Trump’s election “joke.” After a reporter asked if Zelenskyy was open to holding an election — something Trump had criticized him for not doing — he said he would be open to it once the war is over.
Zelenskyy would have been up for reelection in 2024, but Ukrainian law prohibits elections under martial law, which Ukraine imposed after Russia’s invasion.
Trump jumped in: “So you say during the war, you can’t have elections. So let me just say three and a half years from now. So you mean, if we happen to be in a war with somebody, no more elections?”
Zelenskyy laughed.
There is no precedent for postponing or canceling a U.S. presidential election; they were even held during the Civil War. “The date is set by Congress and elections are administered by the states,” Adav Noti, executive director of Campaign Legal Center, previously told PolitiFact. “The president has no role in setting Election Day or moving it.”
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is headed to the White House on Monday after being left out of President Donald Trump’s nearly three-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, in Alaska on Friday. Trump and Putin met to discuss a potential ceasefire deal in Ukraine—but left without such an agreement.
The US-Russian summit in Anchorage between the two leaders featured Trump rolling out a literal red carpet welcome for Putin, clapping as he arrived, and taking several friendly photo-ops together—a contrast from other world leaders who are more icy with the Russian head of state.
Putin accepted Trump’s invitation to ride in the back of the armored presidential Cadillac limousine, known as “The Beast,” from the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson to the meeting location before sitting down with aides for both men. Trump brought Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff into the room with him.
Trump rolled out a literal red carpet welcome for Putin.
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/Getty Images
Trump has already changed course from the plan he previously said he would pursue to apply pressure to Putin to end his offensive in Ukraine.
Following the meeting, as The New York Times reports, “Trump on Saturday split from Ukraine and key European allies after his summit” and is now “backing Mr. Putin’s plan for a sweeping peace agreement based on Ukraine ceding territory it controls to Russia, instead of the urgent ceasefire Mr. Trump had said he wanted before the meeting.”
Much of Europe quickly moved to back Ukraine following Trump’s post-summit strategy shift, though, the Times’ explained, “the leaders treaded carefully to not openly contradict Mr. Trump as he aligned himself with Russia’s vision of ending the war.”
As The Associated Press reported on late Friday, “The U.S. president had offered Putin both a carrot and a stick, issuing threats of punishing economic sanctions on Russia while also extending a warm welcome at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, but he appeared to walk away without any concrete progress on ending the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.”
Since the onset of the war, according to reporting from the Times in June, “Nearly one million Russian troops have been killed or wounded,” and “close to 400,000 Ukrainian troops have also been killed or wounded.”
Following Putin and Trump’s meeting, the US president posted on his social media platform Truth Social about the summit, calling it a “great and very successful day in Alaska!”
Trump wrote that he had spoken with Zelensky and other European leaders and claimed that “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.”
Zelensky confirmed the Monday meeting on X, writing, “I am grateful for the invitation.”
ANCHORAGE — President Trump made his expectations clear entering a summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he said aboard Air Force One.
Yet he did, emerging from their meeting in a diplomatic retreat, endorsing Russia’s territorial ambitions and adopting Putin’s position that would put off ceasefire negotiations in favor of more comprehensive talks.
Trump told his European counterparts he had agreed with Putin’s demand that Ukraine make territorial concessions to end the conflict, a painful prospect for Ukrainians at the heart of the war, a European official told The Times on Saturday.
Trump also wrote on social media that he would adopt the Kremlin line deferring talks on an imminent ceasefire.
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote on social media. “If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved.”
It was a remarkable success for Putin, who sees a Russian edge on the battlefield and has put off discussions of a ceasefire for months as Russian forces press their advantage along the Ukrainian front lines.
Putin was greeted on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with applause and smiles from the American president and offered a ride in his iconic vehicle. After years in isolation over his repeated invasions of Ukraine, facing an indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes, a red carpet awaited Putin on U.S. soil.
Landing in Washington, Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the secretary-general of NATO and other European leaders. A follow-up meeting with Zelensky is scheduled for Monday in Washington.
But achieving a peace agreement is an even higher bar than the ceasefire that has eluded the Trump administration in recent months, requiring comprehensive, often protracted negotiations that, in the meantime, will allow Russia to continue its battlefield offensive.
The New York Times first reported details of Trump’s conversations with European leaders.
Details of the meeting are still unclear. In Alaska, both men referenced “agreements” in statements to reporters. But Trump acknowledged the question that matters most — whether Russia is prepared to implement a ceasefire — remains unresolved.
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“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left,” Trump said. “Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Trump said the meeting went well. “But we’ll see,” he said. “You know, you have to get a deal.”
Trump’s failure to secure a ceasefire from Putin surprised few analysts, who see Putin with the military initiative, pushing forward with offensive incursions along the front, and offering no indication he plans to relent.
The question is whether Putin will be able to sustain Trump’s goodwill when the war continues grinding on. On Friday alone, hours before the summit began, Russian forces struck a civilian market in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.
The Russian delegation left immediately after the press availability, providing no comments to the press corps on how the meetings went behind closed doors. And after sitting down with Fox, Trump promptly left Anchorage for Washington. The White House issued no statements, readouts or fact sheets on the summit. Administration officials fell silent.
“Putin is going to have to give Trump some kind of concession so that he is not completely embarrassed,” said Darren Kew, dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, “probably a pledge of a ceasefire very soon — one of Trump’s key demands — followed by a promise to meet the Ukrainians for talks this fall.”
“Both serve Putin’s goals of delay and appeasing Trump, while allowing more time for Russian battlefield victories,” Kew added, “since ceasefires can easily be broken, and peace talks can drag on for years.”
In brief remarks of his own, Putin said that points of agreement reached with Trump would likely face opposition across Europe, including from Ukraine itself, warning continental allies not to “torpedo nascent progress” in follow-up talks with the White House.
“I would like to hope that the agreement that we have reached together will help us bring us close to that goal, and will pave the path toward peace in Ukraine,” Putin said. “We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works.”
It was an acknowledgment that whatever terms agreed upon bilaterally between Putin and Trump’s team are almost certainly unacceptable to Ukraine, a party to the conflict that has lost hundreds of thousands of lives fighting Russia’s invasion since February 2022.
The Financial Times reported Saturday that Putin had demanded Ukraine cede two eastern administrative divisions at the heart of the conflict — Donetsk and Luhansk — in exchange for Moscow agreeing to freeze the rest of the front line.
Trump told Fox that a Russian takeover of Ukrainian lands was discussed and “agreed upon,” pending Ukrainian approval — an unlikely prospect given vocal opposition from Zelensky and provisions in the Ukrainian Constitution that prohibit the concession of territory.
“Those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed upon, actually. I think we’ve agreed on a lot,” Trump said. “I think we’re pretty close to a deal. Now, look. Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say no.”
Europe and Ukraine have argued that conceding land to Putin is not enough. After invading Crimea in 2014, and successfully holding it, Putin came back for more territory in the eastern Donbas — only to launch a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said this week that its war aims remain unchanged.
“We’re convinced that in order to make the settlement last in the long term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” Putin said, “to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia, and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe, and in the world on the whole.”
“The root causes of the conflict,” he added, “must be resolved.”
Nothing says standing up to Russian aggression quite like welcoming the aggressor on a red carpet and applauding him. On Friday, Donald Trump did both at the start of his summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin. This triumphant greeting was followed by multiple friendly handshakes, a cordial pat or two on the arm, and a companionable stride past an enfilade of American F-22 fighter jets at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. When the pair got within shouting distance of the American press corps, a bit of harsh reality crept in. “President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?” someone called out. But, on the twelve-hundred-and-sixty-eighth day since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, Putin and Trump never wavered from the chummy cordiality with which they had greeted each other for their first meeting in six years. Putin pantomimed not being able to hear the question and shrugged. In an instant, Trump ushered him away for an apparently impromptu ride in his Presidential limousine; pictures of the Beast rolling slowly toward the venue where their formal talks would be held showed Putin, through the window, grinning broadly.
When they emerged a little more than three hours later, after a shorter-than-expected session that did not include a scheduled lunch, the mutual admiration still flowed freely. Both men smiled. Trump gushed to the media about the “fantastic relationship” he’d always had with Putin and praised his “very profound” opening statement. Putin was, if anything, more over the top than Trump, praising the American President’s personal commitment to “pursuing peace,” as the logo projected on the stage behind them put it. Putin even played to Trump’s loathing of his predecessor, Joe Biden, adopting his talking point that the war with Ukraine never would have happened if Trump, not Biden, had been the American President. After twenty-five years in power, the former K.G.B. agent has learned well how to stroke the ego of his fifth U.S. counterpart.
What Putin did not offer, however, was what Trump has been demanding, without any success, for months: a ceasefire in Russia’s war with Ukraine. “There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump acknowledged in his brief remarks. While he spoke of “great progress” and Putin gestured at unspecified agreements that had been reached, “we didn’t get there,” Trump admitted. And that was it. After twelve minutes, and without a single question, the press conference adjourned, leaving stunned journalists to interpret the cryptic outcome: Was that really it, after all Trump’s hype?
Sometimes the news is what it seems to be, meaning, in this case: No deal. The day began with a hellish war in Ukraine, with air-raid sirens in Kyiv and fierce battles in the east, and that is how it ended. The only difference is that Putin got one hell of a photo op out of Trump, and still more time on the clock to prosecute his war against the “brotherly” Ukrainian people, as he had the chutzpah to call them during his remarks in Alaska. The most enduring images from Anchorage, it seems, will be its grotesque displays of bonhomie between the dictator and his longtime American admirer.
Right around the time that Trump was on the tarmac, clapping for the butcher of Bucha, his fund-raising team sent out the following e-mail:
Attention please, I’m meeting with Putin in Alaska! It’s a little chilly. THIS MEETING IS VERY HIGH STAKES for the world. The Democrats would love nothing more than for ME TO FAIL. No one in the world knows how to make deals like me!
The backdrop for this uniquely Trumpian combination of braggadocio and toxic partisanship was, of course, anything but a master class in successful deal-making; rather, the impetus for the summit was the President’s increasing urgency to produce a result after six months of failure to end the war in Ukraine—a task he once said was so easy that it would be done before he even returned to office in January. Leading up to the Alaska summit, nothing worked: Not berating Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. Not begging Putin to “STOP” his bombing. Not even a U.S.-floated proposal to essentially give Putin much of what he had demanded. Trump gave Putin multiple deadlines—fifty days, two weeks, “ten or twelve days”—to agree to a ceasefire and come to the table, then did nothing when Putin balked. When his latest ultimatum expired, on August 8th, instead of imposing tough new sanctions, as he had threatened, Trump announced that he would meet Putin in Alaska a week later, minus Zelensky, in effect ending the Russian’s global isolation in exchange for no apparent concessions aimed at ending the war that Putin himself had unleashed.
In the run-up to the meeting, debates raged about the right historical parallel to draw between this summit and its twentieth-century antecedents: Was it to be a replay of Yalta, with two great powers instead of three settling the fate of absent small nations, and with the United States once again signing off on Russia’s dominance over its neighbors? Or perhaps Munich was the better analogy, with Trump in the role of Neville Chamberlain, ceding a beleaguered ally’s territory as the price of an illusory peace? For Ukraine and its supporters in the West, the prospect of a sellout by Trump loomed large.
But history doesn’t repeat so neatly, and certainly not when Trump is involved. He is a sui-generis American President, who, at the end of the day, seemed to have orchestrated a self-own of embarrassing proportions. As ever, Trump’s big mouth offered up the best reminder of what he wanted in Alaska and what he did not get. On Friday morning, as Trump flew out of Washington aboard Air Force One, he told reporters, “I want to see a ceasefire rapidly. I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.” But, after his long-sought meeting with Putin, as he again boarded Air Force One for the long flight home, this was the chyron on Fox News that greeted him: “No Ceasefire After Trump-Putin Summit.”
In the coming days, there will be endless explanations from Trump and his team as to why he didn’t get more out of the session. But, even in his post-summit interview with the great White House amplifier, Sean Hannity, the President struggled to alchemize the non-deal into Trumpian gold. “On a scale of one to ten,” Hannity asked the President, how would he grade the session? “The meeting was a ten in the sense that we got along great,” Trump responded. When Trump started talking, however, it was hardly about the summit at all, but about the “rigged election” in 2020 and how terrible Biden was and how he and Putin could have got so much done together if there had been no Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. Soon he was on to riffs about Iran and the border and his tariffs and how things in the U.S. are going so great that “Vladimir” told him, “Your country is hot as a pistol.” (Yeah, right.) On and on Trump went, about beating ISIS and why mail-in voting is terrible, about how big China is and how powerful America’s nuclear weapons are. Those tough-guy sanctions he once promised to place on Putin if he didn’t produce a deal weren’t so much as mentioned.
The more he talked about anything other than Russia, in fact, the more it was obvious: Even Trump knew he had bombed. “Now it’s really up to President Zelensky to get it done,” he said at one point. If there’s one unwavering Law of Trump, this is it: Whatever happens, it is never, ever, his fault. ♦
ANCHORAGE — Three hours of negotiations with Vladimir Putin over Russia’s war in Ukraine were “extremely productive,” but only Kyiv can decide whether a deal toward a ceasefire is possible, President Trump said Friday, capping a historic summit with the Russian leader.
At a news conference at a U.S. air base in Alaska, the two men alluded to agreements made, but offered no details and took no questions. “We didn’t get there,” Trump said.
“I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on,” Trump said, adding: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal. I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up various people.
“It’s ultimately up to them,” he added.
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Standing alongside Trump, Putin warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress” of “the agreement that we’ve reached.”
“We’re convinced that, in order to make the settlement last in the long term, we have to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of the conflict,” Putin said. “Naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well.”
The talks were the first high-level negotiations in Russia’s years-long military campaign, a war of conquest that has resulted in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
Trump had said before the summit he would know if Putin was serious about peace within minutes of their meeting. Yet, before the talks began, the Russian leader, a global pariah since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, received a red carpet arrival on American soil and a greeting of applause from the U.S. president.
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It was an extraordinary welcome for Putin, whose government has called the United States an “enemy state” and who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine. Putin’s war has led to 1.4 million casualties, according to independent analysts, including 1 million dead and wounded among Russian soldiers alone.
At the end of their news conference, Putin suggested Trump visit Moscow for their next summit. Trump said he would consider it.
Thehigh-stakes summit came amid ongoing Russian strikes on civilian targets. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned Russian forces for striking a market in Sumy mere hours before the Alaska summit.
“On the day of negotiations, the Russians are killing as well,” Zelensky said in a statement. “And that speaks volumes.”
Zelensky was not invited to the Anchorage negotiations. But Trump said he hoped his meeting Friday would lead to direct talks “very shortly.”
The Ukrainian president met with Britain’s prime minister in recent days, and planned to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron after the Alaska summit.
Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Anchorage, Trump suggested he had planned to take a tougher line with Putin, threatening to walk if he didn’t see immediate progress.
“I want to see a ceasefire,” Trump said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.”
The two men were scheduled to meet privately, accompanied only by interpreters, before joining their aides for a working lunch. But in-flight, Trump’s plans changed to include his secretary of State and national security advisor, Marco Rubio, as well as his special envoy to the conflict, Steve Witkoff.
Whether Putin is ready to implement an immediate ceasefire is far from clear, with the Russian Foreign Ministry stating this week that the Kremlin’s war aims are “unchanged.” Over the past week, with the presidential summit scheduled, the Russian army launched an aggressive attempt to breech the Ukrainian front lines.
Trump’s deference toward Putin has been a fixture of his time in office, with the president often refusing to criticize the Russian leader. But his tone began to shift toward Putin at a NATO summit in June, held in The Hague, where European leaders agreed to significant defense spending commitments in a bid to keep Trump on their side.
Since then, Trump has repeatedly expressed “disappointment” with Putin’s refusal to heed his calls for a ceasefire, authorizing the deployment of Patriot missiles in Ukraine and the shipment of other U.S. military equipment.
The Trump administration set a deadline of Aug. 8 for Putin to demonstrate he was seriously committed to peace negotiations, or otherwise face a new round of sanctions, this time targeting its trading partners. Witkoff, a real estate investor with no experience in the region and no diplomatic background, was dispatched to Moscow for meetings with Kremlin leadership.
Within hours of Witkoff’s departure, White House planning for the summit was underway.
The summit came together with so little time that the White House and the Kremlin struggled to secure hotels and venue spaces across Anchorage. The Kremlin press corps, comprising roughly 50 journalists, found itself sleeping on American Red Cross cots on the floor of a University of Alaska sports center.
President Trump meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. At right is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
Trump received Putin on the tarmac of the U.S. air base with a U.S. stealth bomber flying overhead, flanked by U.S. fighter jets and Air Force One. The two men then entered the “Beast,” the official presidential vehicle, for a short ride that included no aides or translators.
On his way to Anchorage, Trump said that Putin would face “economically severe” consequences if the negotiations failed to yield progress toward peace. He said that only Ukraine could decide whether to cede territory to Moscow. And he expressed support for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in any future peace agreement, so long as they fall short of NATO membership for the beleaguered nation.
“Yes, it would be very severe,” Trump said. “Very severe.”
Putin brought several Russian business leaders along with him from Moscow, according to the Kremlin, a sign he had hoped to begin discussions on normalizing relations with Washington. But Trump said he would not discuss business opportunities until the war is settled. Despite bringing his Treasury and Commerce secretaries to Alaska alongside him, a lunch scheduled to include an expanded circle of their aides, to discuss matters other than Ukraine, did not appear to go forward.
European leaders have urged Trump to approach Putin with a firm hand after months of applying pressure on Zelensky to prepare to make concessions to Moscow.
Trump had said in recent days that a peace deal would include the “swapping” of land, a prospect roundly rejected in Kyiv. But the Ukrainian constitution prohibits territorial concessions without the support of a public referendum.
He seemed to soften that stance ahead of the Friday meetings.
“They’ll be discussed, but I’ve got to let Ukraine make that decision,” the president said of land swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I’m here to get them to the table.”
The summit is the first of its kind between a U.S. and Russian president since 2021.
WASHINGTON — After styling himself for decades as a dealmaker, President Trump is showing some receipts in his second term of ceasefires and peace agreements brokered on his watch. But the president faces extraordinary challenges in his latest push to negotiate ends to the world’s two bloodiest conflicts.
Stakes could not be higher in Ukraine, where nearly a million Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded in pursuit of Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest, according to independent analysts. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers add to the catastrophic casualty toll. Trump’s struggle to get both sides to a negotiating table, let alone to secure a ceasefire, has grown into a fixation for Trump, prompting rare rebukes of Putin from the U.S. president.
And in the Gaza Strip, an alliance that has withstood scathing international criticism over Israel’s conduct of its war against Hamas has begun to show strain. Trump still supports the fundamental mission of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to destroy the militant group and secure the release of Israeli hostages in its possession. But mounting evidence of mass starvation in Gaza has begun to fray the relationship, reportedly resulting in a shouting match in their most recent call.
Breakthroughs in the two conflicts have evaded Trump, despite his efforts to fashion himself into the “peacemaker-in-chief” and floating his own nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Turnberry, Scotland, last month, Trump claimed that six wars had been stopped or thwarted under his watch since he returned to office in January. “I’m averaging about a war a month,” he said at the time.
He has, in fact, secured a string of tangible successes on the international stage, overseeing a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda; hosting a peace ceremony between Armenia and Azerbeijan; brokering a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand, and imposing an end to a 12-day war between Israel and Iran after engaging U.S. forces directly in the conflict.
Olivier Nduhungirehe, Rwanda’s foreign minister, from left, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Democratic Republic of the Congo foreign minister Therese Kayikwamba Wagner in the Oval Office of the White House on June 27. The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda agreed to a U.S.-backed peace deal meant to end years of deadly conflict and promote development in Congo’s volatile eastern region.
“We’ve only been here for six months. The world was on fire. We took care of just about every fire — and we’re working on another one,” he said, “with Russia, Ukraine.”
Trump also takes credit for lowering tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, and for brokering a ceasefire between two nuclear states, India and Pakistan, a claim the latter supports but the former denies.
“Wars usually last five to 10 years,” said Michael E. O’Hanlon, chair in defense and strategy at the Brookings Institution. “Trump is tactically clever, but no magician. If he actually gets three of these five conflicts to end, that’s an incredible track record.
“In each case, he may exaggerate his own role,” O’Hanlon said, but “that’s OK — I welcome the effort and contribution, even if others deserve credit, too.”
One-on-one with Putin
Well past his campaign promise of ending Russia’s war with Ukraine “within 24 hours” of taking office, Trump has tried pressuring both sides to come to the negotiating table, starting with the Ukrainians. “You don’t have the cards,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in an infamous Oval Office meeting in February, chastising him to prepare to make painful concessions to end the war.
But in June, at a NATO summit in the Netherlands, Trump’s years-long geniality with Putin underwent a shift. He began criticizing Russia’s leader as responsible for the ongoing conflict, accusing Putin of throwing “meaningless … bull—” at him and his team.
“I’m not happy with Putin, I can tell you that much right now,” Trump said, approving new weapons for Ukraine, a remarkable policy shift long advocated by the Europeans.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and King of Malaysia Sultan Ibrahim walk during a welcoming ceremony at the Grand Kremlin Palace on Wednesday in Moscow. Malaysian King Sultan Ibrahim is on an official visit to Russia.
(Getty Images)
The Trump administration set Friday as a deadline for Putin to demonstrate his commitment to a ceasefire, or otherwise face a new round of crushing secondary sanctions — financial tools that would punish Russia’s trading partners for continuing business with Moscow.
Those plans were put on hold after Trump announced he would meet with Putin in Alaska next week, a high-stakes meeting that will exclude Zelensky.
“The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska. Further details to follow,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, on Friday. “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Meeting Putin one-on-one — the first meeting between a U.S. and Russian president in four years, and the first between Putin and any Western leader since he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — in and of itself could be seen as a reward for a Russian leader seeking to regain international legitimacy, experts said.
In this June 28, 2019, file photo, President Trump, right, meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
(Susan Walsh/Associated Press)
Worse still, Putin, a former KGB officer, could approach the meeting as an opportunity to manipulate the American president.
“Putin has refused to abandon his ultimate objectives in Ukraine — he is determined to supplant the Zelensky government in Kyiv with a pro-Russian regime,” said Kyle Balzer, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “He wants ironclad guarantees that Ukraine will never gain admittance to NATO. So there is currently no agreement to be had with Russia, except agreeing to surrender to Putin’s demands. Neither Ukraine nor Europe are interested in doing so.
“Put simply, Putin likely believes that he can wear down the current administration,” Balzer added. “Threatening Russia with punitive acts like sanctions, and then pulling back when the time comes to do so, has only emboldened Putin to strive for ultimate victory in Ukraine.”
A European official told The Times that, while the U.S. government had pushed for Zelensky to join the initial meeting, a response from Kyiv — noting that any territorial concession to Russia in negotiations would have to be approved in a ballot referendum by the Ukrainian people — scuttled the initial plan.
The Trump administration is prepared to endorse the bulk of Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory, including the eastern region of Donbas and the Crimean peninsula, at the upcoming summit, Bloomberg reported. On Friday, Trump called the issue of territory “complicated.”
“We’re gonna get some back,” he said. “There will be some swapping of territories.”
Michael Williams, an international relations professor at Syracuse University, said that Trump has advocated for a ceasefire in Ukraine “at the expense of other strategic priorities such as stability in Europe and punishment of Russia through increased aid to Ukraine.”
Such an approach, Williams said, “would perhaps force the Kremlin to end the war, and further afield, would signal to other potential aggressors, such as China, that violations of international law will be met with a painful response.”
Gaza
At Friday’s peace ceremony, Trump told reporters he was considering a proposal to relocate Palestinian refugees to Somalia and its breakaway region, Somaliland, once Israel ends hostilities against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
“We are working on that right now,” Trump said.
It was just the latest instance of Trump floating the resettlement of Palestinians displaced during the two-year war there, which has destroyed more than 90% of the structures throughout the strip and essentially displaced its entire population of 2 million people. The Hamas-run Health Ministry reports that more than 60,000 civilians and militants have died in the conflict.
Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and others, has refused to concede the war, stating it would disarm only once a Palestinian state is established. The group continues to hold roughly 50 Israeli hostages, some dead and some alive, among 251 taken during its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which also killed about 1,200 people.
Protesters gather in a demonstration organized by the families of the Israeli hostages taken captive in the Gaza Strip since October 2023 calling for action to secure their release outside the Defense Ministry headquarters in Tel Aviv on Saturday.
(Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)
Israel’s Cabinet voted this week to approve a plan to take over Gaza City in the north of the strip and, eventually, the rest of the territory, a deeply unpopular strategy in the Israeli military and among the Israeli public. Netanyahu on Friday rejected the notion that Israel planned to permanently occupy Gaza.
Despite applying private pressure on Netanyahu, Trump’s strategy has largely fallen in line with that of his predecessor, Joe Biden, whose team supported Israel’s right to defend itself while working toward a peace deal that, at its core, would exchange the remaining hostages for a cessation of hostilities.
The talks have stalled, one U.S. official said, primarily blaming Hamas over its demands.
“In Gaza, there is a fundamental structural imbalance of dealing with a terrorist organization that may be immune to traditional forms of pressure — military, economic or otherwise — and that may even have a warped, perverse set of priorities in which the suffering of its own people is viewed as a political asset because it tarnishes the reputation of the other party, Israel,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “So Trump really only has leverage over one party — his ally, Israel — which he has been reluctant to wield, reasonably so.”
In Ukraine, too, Trump holds leverage he has been unwilling, thus far, to bring to bear.
“There, Trump has leverage over both parties but appears reluctant to wield it on one of them — Russia,” Satloff said.
But Trump suggested Friday that threatened sanctions on India over its purchase of Russian oil, and his agreement with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to secure greater security spending from European members, “had an impact” on Moscow’s negotiating position.
“I think my instinct really tells me that we have a shot at it,” Trump said. “I think we’re getting very close.”
Research reveals remarkable natural regeneration in the aftermath of one of Europe’s worst environmental disasters
KYIV, Ukraine, April 1, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG) has announced remarkable findings on the ecological recovery of the former Kakhovka Reservoir, nearly two years after its destruction by Russian forces in June 2023. Researchers have documented the emergence of 40 billion trees across the drained landscape, with some already reaching five meters in height.
“The attack on the Kakhovka HPP was the most devastating environmental impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It was not just an act of terrorism but also the largest case of reservoir destruction in history. After this, the term ‘ecocide’ ceased to be merely a rhetorical device used by environmentalists and became a widely recognized term in international negotiations,” stated Olexii Vasyliuk, Head of the Board of the Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group. “It will take at least several decades to restore the biodiversity of the land that was submerged after Russian troops blew up the dam. No less time will be needed to recover the biodiversity of the Black Sea, whose coastal waters were suddenly flooded with 14 cubic kilometers of heavily polluted freshwater.“
The dam’s destruction triggered catastrophic flooding, sweeping away communities and habitats. In the aftermath, scientists observed rapid natural regeneration. What began as scattered seedlings has grown into southern Ukraine’s largest forest-covering an area comparable to Luxembourg.
Key Research Findings:
Rapid Natural Regeneration: A dense young forest has established itself across the former reservoir bed in less than two years
Toxic Legacy: Soil samples reveal concerning levels of heavy metals including arsenic, lead, and zinc accumulated over the reservoir’s 70-year existence
Historic Restoration: The emerging ecosystem mirrors the historic “Great Meadow” (Velykyi Luh) that existed before the reservoir’s creation in 1956
Global Significance: This represents one of the world’s largest natural rewilding events, offering unprecedented research opportunities
“This horrific catastrophe has inadvertently created a living laboratory for understanding ecological resilience and recovery,” said Dr. Paul Salaman, President of Conservation Allies. “While the disaster’s human and environmental toll cannot be minimized, the rapid transformation we’re witnessing provides crucial insights for conservation and restoration efforts worldwide.”
UNCG has published two books documenting their findings. The publications explore both the immediate environmental impact and future restoration scenarios, advocating for natural rewilding instead of reconstructing the reservoir.
UNCG continues to monitor this transformation while pushing for the area’s protection, setting a global precedent for large-scale ecosystem restoration.
About Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group (UNCG)
The Ukrainian Nature Conservation Group leads biodiversity research, conservation, and restoration in Ukraine, continuing its vital work despite the ongoing war.
Conservation Allies supports local conservation groups worldwide, enhancing biodiversity protection and sustainable ecosystem management, especially during crises.
‘Now I know that God is my dad’ – young girl after reading the Bible
FORT WORTH, Texas, March 12, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– Nastya’s world was shattered when war took her parents, leaving her alone in an orphanage, overwhelmed with sorrow and hopelessness. She had no one to turn to – until she received a children’s Bible in 2024. Clutching its pages every night, she searched for comfort and hope. Her teacher soon saw a transformation: the light returning to her eyes, a sense of peace settling in her heart.
One night, Nastya whispered, “Now I know that God is my dad.”
For the first time since losing her parents, Nastya knew she was not alone. Then, two months later, she experienced another miracle – she was adopted into a loving family. The one thing she refused to leave behind: her Bible.
Right now, thousands of children like Nastya are waiting for the hope found in God’s Word.
Through the 2025 Bibles for Kids campaign, EEM aims to provide 600,000 illustrated children’s Bibles in 21 languages to kids across Eastern Europe and beyond.
In the last four years, EEM has provided 2.1 million children and teens with their own copy of God’s Word through the ministry’s annual Bibles for Kids campaigns.
“When kids grow up with a copy of the Bible in their own language, they discover that God’s love is real, personal and everlasting,” said EEM CEO and President Bob Burckle. “Children who receive a Bible find strength, peace, and the promise of eternal life with Jesus.”
For more than six decades, EEM has faithfully worked to provide free Bibles and Bible-based materials to people in former Communist bloc countries and beyond. From smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain in the 1960s to working with ministry partners to provide Bibles to refugees in the 2020s, EEM’s mission is simple: to share God’s Word with everyone. Through partnerships with churches, schools, orphanages, refugee ministries and rehabilitation centers, EEM distributes Bibles in over 36 countries in more than 32 languages.
“The Bibles for Kids campaign invites Christians worldwide to come alongside these children in faith – through prayer and financial partnership. Every Bible placed into these precious hands is a chance for a child’s future to be changed for eternity,” said Dirk Smith, EEM Vice President.
“With this year’s matching fund campaign, every $5 donation provides two Bibles to two children,” Smith added. “More than a book; it’s a life-changing message – an invitation to eternity with Jesus!”
To learn more about Bibles for Kids, visit eem.org/bfk.
About EEM (Eastern European Mission)
EEM was established in 1961 to provide Bibles and Bible-based materials throughout the former communist bloc countries in Eastern Europe. Today, EEM publishes and prints Bibles and New Testaments as well as Teen Bibles, Children’s Bibles and coloring books, distributing them through a vast network of partner churches and organizations reaching more than 36 countries in 32 different languages, including Farsi and Arabic. Visit us at www.eem.org.
