Vladimir Putin

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived on Wednesday in Berlin for a virtual summit with European officials and United States President Donald Trump, convened by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The call was meant to bring European leaders together with Trump before the planned August 15 Alaska meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Those on the call included Merz and the US president, as well as US Vice President JD Vance, Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof, among others.

Here are the key takeaways:

What happened on Wednesday?

The prospect of Trump meeting alone with Putin has left European leaders uneasy. Since the Alaska summit was announced, they have worked to secure Trump’s ear one last time, and on Wednesday, that effort resulted in a series of high-level calls.

About 12:00 GMT, European leaders and NATO members held a video conference with Zelenskyy. Roughly an hour later, Trump and Vice President JD Vance joined the discussion.

Chancellor Merz and President Zelenskyy then delivered joint statements, followed by a separate address from Trump at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

Later in the day, the “Coalition of the Willing”, a group of 31 countries committed to strengthening support for Ukraine against Russian aggression, met in a separate virtual session, issuing a statement.

What were the key takeaways from all these talks?

Here is a breakdown.

EU leaders:

Following the talks with other European leaders and Trump:

• Merz said that European and Ukrainian security interests must be respected at Friday’s Alaska summit. He underlined the importance of Ukraine having a seat at the table in any peace discussions, with a ceasefire as the essential first step.
• “We have made it clear that Ukraine will be at the table as soon as there is a follow-up meeting,” Merz told reporters in Berlin alongside Zelenskyy. “President Trump wants to make a ceasefire a priority,” he added.
• Any territorial exchange in Ukraine “must only be discussed with Ukraine”, French President Macron told reporters in Bregancon, France, following the call.
• “Trump was very clear on the fact that the US wants to obtain a ceasefire at this meeting in Alaska,” Macron said.  “We must continue to support Ukraine, and when I say ‘we’, I mean Europeans and Americans,” he added.

• Ukraine needs credible security guarantees as part of any peace deal, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Starmer said following the virtual summit. The United Kingdom’s support for Ukraine is “unwavering”, he added.

Zelenskyy statements:

• Zelenskyy, during the news conference with Merz, said Putin is “bluffing” about being interested in peace. “Russia is attempting to portray itself as capable of occupying all of Ukraine. That is undoubtedly what they want,” Zelenskyy said.
• The Ukrainian leader also warned that “talks about us, without us, will not work”.
• “Everything concerning Ukraine must be discussed exclusively with Ukraine. We must prepare a trilateral format for talks. There must be a ceasefire,” Zelenskyy added.
• He also said “there must be security guarantees – truly reliable ones”.
• Among the agreed principles, Zelenskyy said, is that Russia must not be allowed to block Ukraine’s path to joining the European Union or NATO, and that peace talks should go hand in hand with maintaining pressure on Russia.

• The Ukrainian leader also emphasised that sanctions should be strengthened if Russia fails to agree to a ceasefire during the Alaska summit. “These are effective principles. It is important that they work,” Zelenskyy added.

Thank you for your support! https://t.co/8GyunlWhwf

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 13, 2025

Trump’s news conference:

Following the call, Trump spoke at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC:

• “We had a very good call. I would rate it a 10, very friendly,” Trump explained. The US leader then went on to discuss potential next steps ahead of Friday’s meeting.
• “There’s a very good chance that we’re going to have a second meeting, which will be more productive than the first. Because the first is: I’m going to find out where we are and what we’re doing,” he said.
• Trump also mentioned the possibility of a later meeting “between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself, if they’d like to have me there”, after the first meeting between him and Putin.
• Trump also said he plans to call Zelenskyy and other European leaders after Friday’s discussions with Putin.
• The US president also said there will be “very severe consequences” for Russia if Putin doesn’t agree to end the war after Friday’s meeting.

• “Do you believe you can convince him to stop targeting civilians in Ukraine?” one journalist asked Trump. “I’ve had that conversation with him,” Trump said.
• “Then I go home and I see that a rocket hit a nursing home or a rocket hit an apartment building and people are laying dead in the street. So I guess the answer to that is no, because I’ve had this conversation,” he added.
• However, he reaffirmed his intention to find a solution: “I want to end the war. It’s Biden’s war, but I want to end it. I’ll be very proud to end this war, along with the five other wars I ended,” he said, without explaining which other conflicts he was referring to. He has claimed credit for ceasefires between India and Pakistan in May and Israel and Iran in June, and helped mediate truce pacts between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. Trump has also repeatedly made it clear that he covets a Nobel Peace Prize and believes he is deserving of one.

The Coalition of the Willing:

The coalition issued a statement outlining four key requirements they believe should form the basis of Friday’s talks.

• They said “meaningful negotiations can only take place in the context of a ceasefire or a lasting and significant cessation of hostilities”.
• Second, if Russia refuses a ceasefire in Alaska, sanctions and other economic measures should be intensified to further strain its war economy.
• Third, “international borders must not be changed by force”.
• Fourth, Ukraine should receive strong security guarantees, with the Coalition of the Willing ready to help, including a reassurance force after hostilities end. “No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries,” the statement said. And Russia cannot veto Ukraine’s path to EU or NATO membership.

Will the European intervention influence the Alaska summit?

It’s unclear, but analysts say that Wednesday’s calls show how Europe has managed to make sure that Trump can’t ignore the continent.

“Even if certain commitments are given, we don’t know what will happen once Putin and Trump find themselves in a room,” Lucian Kim, a senior analyst for Ukraine with the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.

“The Europeans have quite a lot of power and even more than they realise themselves,” he said, adding that it was an “achievement” for European leaders to get Trump’s attention, and there is now a difference in tone.

“It was not a given when Trump first got into office that he would listen to the Europeans,” he said. Kim also noted that Europe has used its power and influence to pressure Russia over the war.

“Russia was heavily dependent on Europe, not the United States, and this lack of trade is hurting Russia,” he said. “Also, you have European banks that are holding hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian government assets.”

“Trump has realised that without the Europeans, it will be very hard to reach any solution in Ukraine.”

What has Russia said so far about any peace agreement?

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexey Fadeev told a news conference that Moscow’s position remained unchanged since President Putin outlined it in June 2024.

At the time, Putin had said that a ceasefire would take effect immediately if the Ukrainian government withdrew from four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. He also insisted that Ukraine must formally abandon its bid to join the NATO military alliance.

Russia currently controls about 19 percent of Ukraine, including the entirety of Crimea and Luhansk, more than 70 percent of Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, as well as small portions of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions.

Here are the key events on day 1,267 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, August 14:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said Russian forces had captured the settlements of Zatyshok and Zapovidne in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
• Ukraine’s military said its drones hit the Uniecha oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region. “Damage and a large-scale fire were recorded in the area of the booster pumping station building,” the Ukrainian General Staff said on Telegram.
• A small fire ignited by debris from a destroyed Ukrainian drone was promptly doused at the Slavyansk oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region, authorities said.
• Russia’s air defence units destroyed 46 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Defence Ministry said, including five over Krasnodar.

Alaska Summit

• United States President Donald Trump threatened “severe consequences” if Russia’s Vladimir Putin does not agree to peace in Ukraine.
• Trump also said that his meeting with Putin could swiftly be followed by a second that would include the leader of Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Trump did not specify what the consequences could be if Putin does not agree to a ceasefire, but he has warned of economic sanctions if his meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday proves fruitless.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European leaders had laid out terms for a ceasefire in Ukraine that would protect their security interests in a call with Trump on Wednesday.
• European leaders, including Zelenskyy, held the call with Trump in advance of his meeting with Putin.

• Britain, France and Germany – co-chairs of the so-called “Coalition of the Willing” – set out their position on the pathway to a ceasefire in Ukraine, in a statement released after their virtual meeting.
• “Ukraine must have robust and credible security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” they said in the joint statement.
• “The Coalition of the Willing is ready to play an active role, including through plans by those willing to deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased,” they said.
• “No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries. Russia could not have a veto against Ukraine’s pathway to EU and NATO,” they added.
• British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told Trump there should be robust security guarantees as part of any peace deal with Russia.
• “The Prime Minister was clear that our support for Ukraine is unwavering – international borders must not be changed by force and Ukraine must have robust and credible security guarantees to defend its territorial integrity as part of any deal,” Starmer’s office said.
• Zelenskyy said he warned Trump that the Russian leader is “bluffing” about his desire to end the war.
• Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ deputy spokesperson, Alexei Fadeev, said Moscow’s stance on ending the war in Ukraine has not changed since Putin set out his conditions last year, which include the full withdrawal of Kyiv’s forces from key Ukrainian regions and the abandonment of its NATO ambitions.
• Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Russia wants to include a reduction of NATO troop presence in any conversations about the future of Ukraine.

Regional affairs

• Russian hackers briefly took control of a dam in Norway earlier this year, the head of the Nordic country’s counter-intelligence agency said, the first time Oslo has officially attributed the cyberattack to its neighbour.
• While in command of the dam in Bremanger, western Norway, on April 7, hackers opened a flood gate and released 500 litres (132 gallons) of water per second for four hours before the attack was detected and stopped.
• Joint exercises to be held by Russian and Belarusian forces next month will include drills on the planned use of nuclear weapons and the Russian-made, intermediate-range hypersonic Oreshnik missile, Belarus’s defence minister said.
• Estonia is expelling a Russian diplomat over sanctions violations and other crimes against the state, the Baltic country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
• The first secretary of the Russian embassy in Tallinn has been declared ‘persona non grata’ and must leave Estonia, the ministry said. Moscow said Estonia’s expulsion was a hostile act that would prompt a response.

Military aid

• Germany plans to fund a $500m package of military equipment and munitions for Ukraine sourced from the US, NATO said in a statement.
• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte commended Germany for the decision, adding: “This delivery will help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression.”
• A Czech-led initiative for Ukraine has delivered one million large-calibre ammunition pieces so far this year, Prime Minister Petr Fiala said.
• The Czech government expects the number of ammunition shipments will rise this year after deliveries of 1.5 million pieces, including 500,000 155mm shells, in 2024.
• Poland has signed a contract worth $3.8bn to upgrade its fleet of F-16 fighter jets, the Polish defence minister said.
• Poland has been ramping up defence spending since the start of the war in Ukraine and plans to allocate 5 percent of gross domestic product to its armed forces in 2026.
• The European Commission has signed a guarantee agreement with the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development for a 500-million-euro ($586m) loan to help Ukraine’s energy sector.

US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are set to meet in Alaska for talks on the war in Ukraine.

But concern is increasing in Kyiv and among its European allies over fears of Ukraine being sidelined.

So, what’s at stake at the Alaska summit for all sides?

Presenter: Adrian Finighan

Guests: 

Anatol Lieven – Director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Steven Erlanger – Chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times

Alex Titov – Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast and a specialist in Russian foreign policy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reiterated that there should be no peace talks to end the Russia-Ukraine war now in its fourth year without representation from his country, and also said Russia should face sanctions if it does not agree to an immediate ceasefire, following a virtual meeting between him, United States President Donald Trump and European leaders.

Zelenskyy delivered the message after the call on Wednesday, two days ahead of a summit between Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska, which comes as part of Washington’s so far failed attempts to end the war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Trump promised to hold trilateral talks with both Ukraine and Russia, if Friday’s summit “goes OK”.

“I would like to do it immediately,” he said. “We’ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelenskyy and myself if they’d like to have me there.”

The US president also vowed that Moscow would face “severe consequences” if Putin did not agree to end its war.

In a joint statement, leaders of the UK, France and Germany said that Russia should face tougher sanctions if it fails to agree to a ceasefire on Friday.

Kyiv must also be given “robust and credible security guarantees” and have no limitations placed on its armed forces or on its cooperation with other countries, they added.

“The Coalition of the Willing is ready to play an active role, including through plans by those willing to deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased.”

The rapid developments came after Trump met virtually with Zelenskyy and other European leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron and the United Kingdom’s Keir Starmer on Wednesday.

Arranged in a bid for Europe to try and influence Trump’s meeting with Putin on Friday, this second call took place after talks earlier in the day between Zelenskyy, European leaders and the heads of NATO and the European Union.

Thanking German Chancellor Friedrich Merz for hosting the meetings, Zelenskyy said on X that Ukraine and Europe were “cooperating constructively with the United States”.

“I hope that today we have come closer to ending the war and building a guaranteed peaceful future,” he concluded.

Trump and European leaders called their joint meeting a success, with the US president describing it as a “very good call”.

“I would rate it a 10. Very friendly,” he said, speaking during a press conference at the Kennedy Center.

Trump noted that he would be calling Zelenskyy and European leaders immediately following his meeting with Putin.

At a press conference with Merz, Zelenskyy expressed his hope that the Trump-Putin summit would focus on an “immediate ceasefire”.

“Sanctions must be in place and must be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire,” he added.

As the Russian army continues to make sizable territorial gains in the east Ukrainian province of Donetsk, Zelenskyy told the US president and his European colleagues that Putin was “bluffing” about pursuing peace.

His choice of words, a term commonly used in reference to poker, evoked Trump telling Zelenskyy, “you don’t have the cards” in the infamously hostile news conference at the White House on February 28th.

“He is trying to apply pressure before the meeting in Alaska along all parts of the Ukrainian front,” Zelenskyy suggested. “Russia is trying to show that it can occupy all of Ukraine.”

After the Trump call, Merz, who described the meeting as “exceptionally constructive”, stressed that Ukraine is willing to negotiate, but noted that “legal recognition of Russian occupation is not up for debate”.

“The principle that borders cannot be changed by force must continue to apply,” Merz said.

“Negotiations must include robust security guarantees for Kyiv,” he added. “The Ukrainian armed forces must be able and remain able to effectively defend the sovereignty of their country. They must also be able to count on Western aid in the long term.”

After the online meeting, France’s Macron said Trump would be seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine during his meeting with Putin on Friday.

The US president would also seek a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy in the future, the French president noted.

The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska has been a cause for anxiety in Kyiv and Europe more widely, after Trump declared that both Ukraine and Russia would have to swap land if a truce is to be reached.

Speaking from the UK on Wednesday, JD Vance, the US vice-president, seemed to try to allay fears in Europe.

“I just talked to him [Trump] right before I came on the stage, and he said very simply that we are going to make it our mission as an administration to bring peace to Europe once again,” Vance said.

Reporting from Berlin, Al Jazeera’s Step Vaessen said there was “some optimism” in Europe that Trump had agreed to Wednesday’s meeting.

However, Vaessen noted that European leaders were still “concerned that everything changes as soon as President Trump is in that room with President Putin, who they know is a very keen, a very sharp negotiator”.

Elsewhere, the Russian Foreign Ministry sought to downplay the relevance of Europe’s last-minute diplomatic efforts with Trump, branding them “practically insignificant”.

On the battlefield, Russia has claimed to have captured the villages of Suvorovo and Nikanorovka as its gains in Donetsk continue, with the Ukrainian authorities issuing evacuation orders for around a dozen settlements.

The Kremlin’s forces achieved their largest 24-hour advance in more than a year on Tuesday, according to data from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepares for a summit in Alaska with his United States counterpart Donald Trump, he can draw on his experiences from 48 previous meetings with American presidents.

Over 25 years as Russia’s leader, Putin has met and worked with five US presidents: Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama, Trump and Joe Biden.

While some of the earlier meetings were relatively warm, reflecting the hopes of US-Russia friendship between the end of the Cold War and the early 2000s, most of Putin’s more recent interactions — especially with Obama and Biden — have been frostier, as bilateral ties have worsened.

Here’s a recap of some of the key moments from those past meetings, and how jazz concerts and fishing trips gave way to threats.

June 2000: Putin-Clinton

Less than three months after he formally became president of Russia, Putin hosted US President Clinton in Moscow. The Russian leader took Clinton on a tour of the Kremlin, after which a Russian jazz group performed for them.

Clinton congratulated Putin on Russia’s decision to ratify two arms control treaties. “President Yeltsin led Russia to freedom. Under President Putin, Russia has the chance to build prosperity and strength, while safeguarding that freedom and the rule of law,” Clinton said, referring to Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s predecessor as president.

Putin, on his part, described the US as “one of our main partners”. Moscow, he said, would never again seek confrontation with Washington. “Never. We are for cooperation. We are for coming to agreement on problems that might arise,” he said.

But Clinton acknowledged their differences over Chechnya, where Russian forces had launched a major war the previous year, after a series of apartment blasts in Russia killed more than 300 people. Moscow blamed Chechen separatists for the explosions.

The Moscow meeting was the first of four between Putin and Clinton in 2000, the others on the margins of multilateral events, before the US president left office in January the following year.

November 2001: Putin-Bush

After the September 11 attacks, Putin was the first world leader to call then-US President Bush and offer support. Two months later, Bush hosted Putin at his Crawford, Texas ranch, optimism about ties dripping from his words.

“When I was in high school, Russia was an enemy. Now the high school students can know Russia as a friend; that we’re working together to break the old ties, to establish a new spirit of cooperation and trust so that we can work together to make the world more peaceful,” Bush said. Bush drove Putin in a pick-up truck to a waterfall on the ranch.

But by the time they met in Russia in November 2002, US-led efforts for NATO expansion had injected unease into the relationship.

July 2007: Putin-Bush

By this point, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 had amplified tensions between the two countries. But despite differences, Bush continued to maintain a warm personal relationship with Putin, whom he hosted at his parents’ home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

Both acknowledged areas where their views diverged, but they each credited the other with transparency.

Bush took Putin fishing. The Russian president was the only one who caught a fish on that trip – it was set free, Putin said.

April 2008: Putin-Bush

The final meeting between Bush and Putin as presidents took place in Sochi, Russia, and was focused on US plans to expand a missile defence system in Europe that Russia was opposing.

There was no breakthrough – the two leaders agreed to disagree.

But their personal rapport appeared intact. Bush met Putin 28 times in total. He only met British Prime Minister Tony Blair more.

July 2009: Putin-Obama

Putin was now prime minister, with ally Dmitry Medvedev the Russian president.

US President Obama met Putin during a visit to Moscow. By now, differences had grown over Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, which the US had opposed.

“We may not end up agreeing on everything, but I think that we can have a tone of mutual respect and consultation that will serve both the American people and the Russian people well,” Obama told Putin.

June 2013: Putin-Obama

As Obama met Putin on the margins of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland — Russia had been added to the grouping in 1998 and was expelled in 2014 after its annexation of Crimea — their frustration with each other was visible in an awkward photo that made headlines.

The US and its allies wanted then-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit amid the civil war in that country, but Russia was backing him.

“With respect to Syria, we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence; securing chemical weapons and ensuring that they’re neither used nor are they subject to proliferation,” Obama said.

November 2016: Putin-Obama

By the time Obama and Putin met for the ninth and final time at the APEC Summit in Peru, there was no pretence of bonhomie.

Russia had accused the US of engineering a coup against its ally and former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. The US and its allies had imposed sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Crimea.

Putin and Obama spoke for barely four minutes on the sidelines of the summit, with the US president asking his Russian counterpart to stick to his commitments under the Minsk agreements that were meant to bring peace to Ukraine.

July 2018: Putin-Trump

A year and a half into his first presidency, Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election was still clouded by accusations that Russia had interfered in the election on his behalf when he met Putin in Helsinki.

The two met alone, with only interpreters. In a media interaction after that, Putin tried to recast the relationship in optimistic hues. “The Cold War is a thing of past,” he said, before listing a series of modern challenges facing the world — from an environmental crisis to terrorism. “We can only cope with these challenges if we join the ranks and work together. Hopefully, we will reach this understanding with our American partners.”

But it was Trump who made headlines. After he acknowledged that he had discussed the allegations of election interference with Putin, Trump was asked whether he believed US intelligence agencies that had concluded that Moscow had intervened in the vote.

“I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,” Trump said. “He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Trump met Putin six times in all in his first term.

June 2021: Putin-Biden

US President Joe Biden flew to Geneva for his only face-to-face meeting with Putin.

After years of steady deterioration, relations had reached their nadir after Biden had described Putin as a killer in March, prompting Russia to withdraw its ambassador from Washington. The US had followed.

The Geneva meeting helped reset ties – a bit. Both countries agreed to reappoint ambassadors.

But Biden was also blunt with Putin about US concerns over Russian election interference and cyberattacks, and said he had, in effect, threatened Moscow that Washington could launch tit-for-tat cyberstrikes.

Russia by then was building up its troop presence along the border with Ukraine, a key source of stress in ties with the US that came up during the Putin-Biden meeting.

Eight months later, Russia would launch a fully fledged invasion of Ukraine, marking the start of Europe’s largest war since World War II — a war Trump says he wants to end through the summit in Alaska on August 15.

German chancellor has arranged a series of meetings, beginning with European leaders and followed by a call with the US president.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will travel to Berlin for talks with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, European leaders and top United States officials ahead of a planned summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin later this week.

Both the German and Ukrainian governments confirmed the visit on Wednesday, which comes as Kyiv and its European allies push to ensure their voices are heard in discussions about ending the war.

Merz has arranged a series of virtual meetings, beginning with European leaders and followed by a call with Trump and US Vice President JD Vance about an hour later.

The day will conclude with a separate discussion among leaders of the so-called “coalition of the willing” – an assemblage of Western countries allied with Ukraine.

At a news briefing on Wednesday, Merz also pledged to help Ukraine develop long-range missile systems without Western-imposed restrictions on their use or targets.

Trump to meet Putin

Trump has described Friday’s summit with the Russian leader in Alaska as “a feel-out meeting” to gauge whether Putin is serious about ending the conflict.

But he has unsettled European allies by suggesting Ukraine will have to give up some Russian-held territory and by floating the idea of land swaps, without specifying what Moscow might surrender.

European governments have insisted Ukraine must be part of any peace negotiations, warning that excluding Kyiv could benefit Moscow.

On Monday, Trump declined to commit to pushing for Zelenskyy’s participation in his talks with Putin, saying a meeting between himself, Putin and Zelenskyy could be arranged afterwards.

Zelenskyy claimed he rejected an offer on Tuesday that Putin had proposed, where Ukraine would withdraw from the 30 percent of the Donetsk region it still controls as part of a ceasefire deal.

Kyiv and European officials fear that any US–Russia agreement reached without them could legitimise Moscow’s seizure of Ukrainian territory – including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – four regions which are partly occupied by Russia.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said Trump and Putin would discuss “all the accumulated issues” at the meeting.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Alexei Fadeev also said that consultations requested by European countries were “insignificant”.

Russia’s position on ending its war on Ukraine was set out by President Vladimir Putin in June 2024 and has not changed, he added. Putin at that time demanded a full Ukrainian withdrawal from the four regions of the country that Russia has claimed as its own territory but does not fully control.

Fighting continues in eastern Ukraine

Meanwhile, fighting continues along the front line, with the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces reporting 165 clashes with Russian forces over the past day, with the heaviest fighting in the Pokrovsk, Novopavlivka and Lyman sectors.

In the Kherson region, Russian forces used a drone to strike a civilian car on the Novoraisk–Kostyrka highway, killing a man and a woman, according to regional governor Oleksandr Prokudin on Telegram.

The Russian Defence Ministry said its air defences destroyed 46 Ukrainian drones overnight across Russian territory and the Sea of Azov.

Debris from intercepted drones fell on the roof of an apartment block in the southern city of Volgograd and in the yards of four residential buildings in Slavyansk-on-Kuban.

The AFP news agency has also reported that Ukraine is continuing to lose more ground, with evacuations in Bilozerske, while Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported that Russian forces had advanced in Nikanorivka, Shcherbynivka and near Petrivka in the Donetsk region.

Meanwhile, the Ukrainian General Staff said its forces were engaged in “difficult” fighting near Pokrovsk in Donetsk, a key logistical hub for Kyiv’s forces, whose capture would deal a significant blow to its front-line defences and prospects at securing a favourable peace deal with Russia.

European leaders are scrambling to convince United States President Donald Trump to use his upcoming summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to amplify pressure on Moscow to end the war in Ukraine on terms acceptable to Kyiv.

Trump, who has promised to end the three-year war, plans to meet Putin in Alaska on Friday, saying the parties are close to a deal that could resolve the conflict.

Trump recently told reporters that, “I’m going in to speak to Vladimir Putin, and I’m going to be telling him, ‘You’ve got to end this war. You’ve got to end it.’”

The US president said Kyiv and Moscow would both have to cede land in a compromise. “There’ll be some land swapping going on,” he said. Trump has, in the past, discussed the possibility of land swaps. However, neither Russia nor Ukraine have been interested in ceding land to each other as part of a peace agreement.

European leaders worry that major concessions to Russia could create security problems for the region in the future. On Wednesday, August 13, major European leaders are first convening among themselves and with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and are then scheduled to speak to Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.

Here’s what Europe and Ukraine request of Trump, as he prepares for the meeting with Putin;

Keep Ukraine in the room

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Zelenskyy said he would not be at the summit in Alaska, the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin with both in office since 2018.

But he said he hoped it would be followed by “a trilateral meeting” with Trump and Putin, though the Russian leader has so far said he is not willing to meet Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president added that, “I believe that Trump represents the United States of America. He is acting as a mediator – he is in the middle, not on Russia’s side. Let him not be on our side but in the middle.”

On August 9, heads of state from France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and the European Commission issued a statement in support of Ukraine. “We underline our unwavering commitment to the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine,” they said, adding: “We continue to stand firmly alongside Ukraine.”

The statement also insisted that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine”.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who is convening a video call on Wednesday involving Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Zelenskyy and several European leaders to discuss Ukraine, has since doubled down on that message.

“We cannot accept that territorial issues between Russia and America are discussed or even decided over the heads of Europeans, over the heads of Ukrainians,” Merz said in a television interview on Sunday.

“I assume that the American government sees it the same way. That is why there is this close coordination,” he added.

The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on August 10 that “the US has the power to force Russia to negotiate seriously”, but “any deal between the US and Russia must have Ukraine and the EU included, for it is a matter of Ukraine’s and the whole of Europe’s security.”

Ceasefire first

Last week, Putin presented the Trump administration with a ceasefire proposal, demanding major territorial concessions from Kyiv in eastern Ukraine in exchange for an end to the fighting, according to European officials.

The offer, which Putin shared with US special envoy Steve Witkoff on August 6, set off a scramble to obtain further information. According to Zelenskyy, Putin has asked that Russia be handed over all of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, a third of which Kyiv still holds.

But European leaders and Ukraine have responded with a counterproposal of their own, forwarded in a meeting with top US officials in Britain on Saturday. The European plan rejected Russia’s proposal to trade Donetsk for a ceasefire.

It also included demands that a ceasefire take place before any other steps are taken and insisted that territory can only be exchanged in a reciprocal manner.

Finally, the proposal stipulates that any territorial concessions made by Kyiv must be safeguarded by security guarantees, including potential NATO membership for Ukraine.

Ukraine, too, has long argued that a halt in fighting must precede any longer-term peace agreement. Russia on the other hand, has insisted on a larger peace settlement as a condition for a ceasefire.

What else has Zelenskyy said?

Last weekend, Zelenskyy said that Kyiv “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done,” and that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”.

Zelenskyy also pointed out that he doesn’t have the authority to sign off on land swaps. He said that changing Ukraine’s 1991 borders runs counter to the country’s constitution.

Elsewhere, Zelenskyy said in a video message posted to his social media account on Monday night that “he [Putin] is definitely not preparing for a ceasefire or an end to the war”.

“There is no indication whatsoever that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a post-war situation,” he said.

“On the contrary, they are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations. If someone is preparing for peace, this is not what he does,” he added.

What else has Trump said?

On Monday, Trump criticised Zelenskyy over the Ukrainian leader’s resistance to ceding territory to Russia, saying he disagrees “very, very severely” with Zelenskyy.

“I get along with Zelenskyy, but, you know, I disagree with what he’s done. Very, very severely disagree. This is a war that should have never happened,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Trump went on to say that “I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying, ‘Well, I have to get constitutional approval.’ I mean, he’s got approval to go into war and kill everybody, but he needs approval to do a land swap – because there’ll be some land swapping going on,” Trump said.

He added that the land swap will be “for the good of Ukraine,” before adding that a possible deal will also involve “some bad stuff for both” Kyiv and Moscow.

“So, it’s good and there’s bad, but it’s very complex, because you have lines that are very uneven, and there’ll be some swapping. There’ll be some changes in land,” Trump said.

“We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin, and at the end of that meeting, probably in the first two minutes, I’ll know exactly whether or not a deal can be made,” he said.

“Ultimately, I’m going to put the two of them in a room. I’ll be there, or I won’t be there, and I think it’ll get solved,” Trump added.

Call between the two leaders comes days ahead of US President Donald Trump’s summit with Putin in Alaska.

Russian President Vladimir Putin lauded the “bravery” and “heroism” of North Korean soldiers in retaking Russia’s Kursk region from Ukrainian forces during a call with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korean state media has reported.

Putin told Kim that he “highly appreciated” North Korea’s support and the “self-sacrificing spirit” displayed by its troops during the liberation of the western region, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Wednesday.

Kim expressed his “heartfelt thanks” to Putin and said Pyongyang would “always remain faithful” to the spirit of the mutual defence treaty signed by the sides last year, as well as “fully support all measures to be taken by the Russian leadership in the future”, the KCNA said.

“The heads of states of the two countries exchanged views on the issues of mutual concern,” the KCNA said.

“Kim Jong Un and Putin agreed to make closer contact in the future.”

The call, days before Putin is set to meet United States President Donald Trump in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine, is the latest sign of strengthening ties between North Korea and Russia amid Moscow’s ostracisation on the world stage.

“There are a lot of ifs still in the air, but the call suggests there’s a role for Russia, similar to the role South Korea played in 2018, in helping create an opening for US-DPRK relations,” Jenny Town, the director of the Korea programme at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC, told Al Jazeera, using the acronym for North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“It might not be a focal point of the upcoming meeting, but it is likely to be part of the conversation.”

Last month, Kim told Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov that Pyongyang would “unconditionally support” all actions taken by Moscow in Ukraine, according to North Korean state media reports.

North Korea has deployed more than 10,000 troops to support Russia’s war and has drawn up plans to dispatch thousands more, according to assessments by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

In April, Putin announced that Moscow had fully recaptured Kursk, though Ukrainian officials disputed his claim that the entire region had been brought under Russian control.

At his scheduled summit with Putin on Friday, Trump is expected to press the Russian leader to agree to a peace deal.

On Monday, he told reporters that he will probably know within the “first two minutes” of meeting Putin whether they can reach a deal and that any agreement would involve “some swapping, changes in land” between Moscow and Kyiv.

Here are the key events on day 1,266 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, August 13:

Fighting

• A Russian attack killed a civilian and injured one other person in Shakhove, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
• Russian forces bombed the town of Bilozerske, also in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, overnight, killing two people and injuring seven, including a 16-year-old boy, the regional prosecutor’s office said.
• The AFP news agency reported that Ukrainians were evacuating Bilozerske as Russian troops made gains in the area, while Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported that Russian forces had advanced in Nikanorivka, Shcherbynivka and near Petrivka in the Donetsk region.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia wants Ukraine to withdraw from the entire Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine as part of a ceasefire deal, as Russian leader Vladimir Putin is due to meet United States President Donald Trump for talks about the war in Alaska on Friday.
• The Ukrainian General Staff said its forces were involved in “difficult” fighting close to Pokrovsk and Dobropillia in Donetsk, and that reinforcements were required to block attacks by small groups of Russian troops.
• Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service claimed that Ukrainian drones hit a Russian long-range drone storage warehouse in the Kzyl-Yul settlement in the Russian republic of Tatarstan.
• A person died after being injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on Monday in Arzamas, in Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod region, according to Russia’s state-run TASS news agency, which cited the regional governor.

• International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Mariano Grossi said that IAEA staff had observed smoke rising from an administration building at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, but that there was “no radiation increase, no nuclear safety impact reported, and no casualties”.

• Russian forces shot down six guided bombs and 179 drones in 24 hours, the Russian Ministry of Defence reported on Tuesday, according to TASS.

Ceasefire

• Zelenskyy said that the summit between Trump and Putin in Alaska on Friday is a “personal victory” for Putin, “because he is meeting on US territory”, and because he “has somehow postponed sanctions”.
• Zelenskyy also said he had received a “first signal” from US envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia might agree to a ceasefire, without providing further details.
• White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said that the meeting in Alaska’s capital, Anchorage, would be “a listening exercise for the president”, and that the aim was for him “to walk away with a better understanding of how we can end this war”.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov spoke on the phone on Tuesday. The US State Department said that “both sides confirmed their commitment to ensure a successful event” in Alaska.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that Putin spoke with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about his upcoming meeting with Trump. Putin also expressed appreciation for North Korea’s support in the “liberation of the Kursk Region from the invading forces of the Kyiv regime”, the ministry said in a post on Telegram.
• Zelenskyy held calls with the president of Turkiye, the emir of Qatar, the president of Romania and the prime minister of the Netherlands on Tuesday.

Russia says both sides affirm intention for Putin-Trump meet in Alaska on Friday, where Ukraine war set to be discussed.

The top diplomats from Russia and the United States have held a phone call ahead of a planned meeting this week between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In a post on Telegram on Tuesday, the ministry said Sergei Lavrov said the two sides had reaffirmed their intention to hold successful talks. The US Department of State did not immediately confirm the talks.

But speaking shortly after the announcement, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt revealed that Trump would meet with Putin in the city of Anchorage. She said the pair would discuss ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“On Friday morning, Trump will travel across the country to Anchorage, Alaska for a bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Leavitt told reporters.

She added that Trump “is determined to try and end this war and stop the killing”.

On Monday, Trump told reporters he was “going to see” what Putin “has in mind” when it comes to a deal to end the fighting.

Trump also said he and Putin would discuss “land swapping”, indicating he may support an agreement that sees Russia maintain control of at least some of the Ukrainian territory it occupies.

Kyiv has repeatedly said that any deal that would see it cede occupied land – including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – to Russia would be a non-starter.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Putin wants Ukraine to withdraw from the remaining 30 percent of the Donetsk region that Ukraine controls as part of a ceasefire deal, saying the position had been conveyed to him by a US official.

He reiterated Ukraine would not withdraw from the territories it controls, noting that such a move would go against the country’s constitution and would serve only as a springboard for a future Russian invasion.

Moscow has maintained that any deal must require Ukraine to relinquish some of the territories Russia has seized since 2014. He has also called for a pause to Western aid for Ukraine and an end to Kyiv’s efforts to join the NATO military alliance.

Friday’s planned meeting will be the first time Putin has been in the US since 2015, when he attended the UN General Assembly.

The pair met six times during Trump’s first presidency, including a 2018 summit in Helsinki, during which Trump sided with Putin – and undermined the US intelligence community – by saying Russia did not meddle in the 2016 election.

Published on
12/08/2025 – 15:34 GMT+2

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Russian markets are reacting positively to the upcoming visit by President Vladimir Putin to the United States — his first since 2015 — with the MOEX Russia Index climbing above 2,950 points, its highest level since late April.

The index initially rose last Wednesday as Putin met with Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Moscow. It then began to climb again as the location of the Trump-Putin summit was announced on Friday.

On Tuesday at around 15.15 CEST, the MOEX was trading at 2,959.63, a bump of 1.2% compared to its close at around 2,924.63 on Friday.

Investors are hopeful about a diplomatic breakthrough at the upcoming Trump–Putin meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, likely counting on an easing of sanctions or new trade channels being unlocked.

The jump was buoyed by Russian energy giants, with Gazprom shares climbing 3.65% and Novatek surged 5.44%, according to the Moscow Times.

Geopolitical buzz

Geopolitical buzz can swing markets as investors are encouraged by the possibility of conflict resolution or escalation.

Just the prospect of high-level talks can trigger climbs in sectors tied to trade, energy or infrastructure.

However, uncertainty or lack of results can just as quickly reverse the gains, which could happen if the much-anticipated summit does not produce any tangible results — something that is likely due to the fact that European powers are so far not involved in the talks between Trump and Putin.

It also remains unclear how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will be incorporated in the talks, as he and European powers insist there can be no lasting deal without Kyiv agreeing to it as well.

Before the 2022 sanctions caused by the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the MOEX Russia Index was trading near record highs above 3,800 points in late 2021, backed by strong oil prices and post-pandemic recovery momentum.

Russian President Putin ‘is definitely not preparing for a ceasefire’, says Zelenskyy, as US, and Russian leaders scheduled to meet in Alaska.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Vladimir Putin is not preparing for a ceasefire but is readying his troops for “new offensive operations” in Ukraine, even as the Russian leader is set to meet US President Donald Trump for peace talks in Alaska.

Zelenskyy said reports from Ukrainian intelligence and military commanders indicate that Putin intends to present his meeting on Friday with Trump as “a personal victory and then continue acting exactly as before” in the war on Ukraine.

“He is definitely not preparing for a ceasefire or an end to the war,” Zelenskyy said in a video message posted to his social media account on Monday night.

“There is no indication whatsoever that the Russians have received signals to prepare for a post-war situation,” he said.

“On the contrary, they are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations. If someone is preparing for peace, this is not what he does,” he added.

Today, there was a report from the intelligence and military command on what Putin is counting on and what he is actually preparing for, including military preparations. He is definitely not preparing for a ceasefire or an end to the war. Putin is determined only to present a… pic.twitter.com/T3sqQg0ltT

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 11, 2025

Ukraine’s military spokesperson for the southern front-line sector, Vladyslav Voloshyn, told the Reuters news agency on Monday that Russia was moving some military units in the Zaporizhia region for further assaults.

Earlier on Monday, Zelenskyy warned that any concessions to Russia would not persuade it to stop fighting in Ukraine.

“Russia refuses to stop the killings, and therefore, must not receive any rewards or benefits,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

“Concessions do not persuade a killer,” he said.

The Ukrainian leader’s warnings come in advance of Trump’s scheduled meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday, and after the US president said that Kyiv would have to cede land to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, a proposition that Ukraine has firmly rejected.

“There’ll be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody; to the good, for the good of Ukraine. Good stuff, not bad stuff. Also, some bad stuff for both,” Trump told a news conference in Washington, DC, on Monday.

Trump also said he would know “probably in the first two minutes” of meeting with Putin, whether progress was possible.

“I’m going to be telling him, ‘You’ve got to end this war,’” Trump said, adding that a future meeting with Putin could include Zelenskyy.

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney also said on Monday that a peace deal for Ukraine must involve Kyiv and not be imposed upon it.

“Both leaders underscored that Ukraine’s future must be one of freedom, sovereignty, and self-determination,” a spokesperson for Starmer said.

Zelenskyy also said he had spoken to Canada’s Carney and told him that the “Russians simply want to buy time, not end the war”.

“The situation on the battlefield and Russia’s wicked strikes on civilian infrastructure and ordinary people prove this clearly,” Zelenskyy said in a post on social media.

US-based think tank the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), which monitors the conflict in Ukraine on a daily basis, said in a recent report that Moscow does not appear to be preparing the Russian public for accepting “a settlement short of a full victory in Ukraine”.

That assessment, the ISW said, was based on “the lack of change in public Kremlin messaging, in combination with ongoing speculation that Putin is looking to ‘outplay’ the West”.

European leaders and Zelenskyy plan to speak with Trump in advance of his meeting with Putin as fears mount that Washington may dictate unfavourable peace terms to Ukraine after the Alaska summit.

Here are the key events on day 1,265 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 12:

Fighting

• Two ambulance workers were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Horlivka, in the Russian-occupied Donetsk region, Russian-installed administrator Ivan Prikhodko said in a post on Telegram. The driver of the ambulance was also in a serious condition, Prikhodko said.
• Russian forces launched dozens of attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing four people and injuring seven, regional Governor Oleksandr Prokudin said in a post on Telegram. Two apartment buildings and 30 houses were damaged, he added.
• Russian forces killed two civilians and injured 11 in the Donetsk region on Sunday, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram.
• A Russian attack killed a man and injured two women in the village of Kupiansk-Vuzlovy, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said in a post on Telegram.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russian forces “used more than a thousand aerial bombs and nearly 1,400 attack drones against Ukraine” in the past week. The latest figures show that Russia is continuing its intense bombardment of the country after carrying out a record 6,297 drone attacks on Ukraine in July.
• Russian forces occupied the village of Zatyshok, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Ukrainian battlefield monitoring group DeepState reported.

Ceasefire talks

• Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Ryabkov said that Moscow hopes the meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump in Alaska on Friday will give “impulse to the normalisation of bilateral relations” between the two countries, Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reports.
• Speaking to journalists on Monday about the upcoming meeting, Trump again said that “there’ll be some swapping, there’ll be some changes in land” discussed, but that he will also tell Putin: “You’ve got to end this war.”
• Asked if Zelenskyy would be invited to the talks, Trump said: “He wasn’t part of it… I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings. He’s been there for three and a half years, and nothing happened.”
• NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told US broadcaster ABC on Sunday that “when it comes to this whole issue of territory, when it comes to acknowledging, for example, maybe in a future deal that Russia is controlling de facto, factually, some of the territory of Ukraine, it has to be effectual recognition, and not a political de jure recognition.”
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that French, United Kingdom and other European leaders, as well as EU and NATO chiefs, will discuss “further options to exert pressure on Russia”, and the “preparation of possible peace negotiations and related issues of territorial claims and security”, at virtual talks on Wednesday.

Sanctions

• The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said that the bloc is working on “more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU”, after European foreign ministers held emergency talks on Monday before the Trump-Putin meeting on Friday.
• The European Commission said it received 1.6 billion euros ($1.86bn) “in so-called windfall profits” from interest on “immobilised assets of the Russian Central Bank” in the first half of 2025, and that 95 percent of the funds will be used to support Ukraine through the Ukraine Loan Cooperation Mechanism (ULCM).

Politics and diplomacy

• Trump will hold talks with European leaders and Zelenskyy on Wednesday, the European Commission press office told the Kyiv Independent media outlet.
• Zelenskyy said he held calls with Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

Kyiv, Ukraine – Taras, a seasoned Ukrainian serviceman recovering from a contusion, expects “no miracles” from United States President Donald Trump’s August 15 summit with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

“There’s going to be no miracles, no peace deal in a week, and Putin will try to make Trump believe that it is Ukraine that doesn’t want peace,” the fair-haired 32-year-old with a deep brown tan acquired in the trenches of eastern Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.

Taras, who spent more than three years on the front line and said he had recently shot down an explosives-laden Russian drone barging at him in a field covered with explosion craters, withheld his last name in accordance with the wartime protocol.

Putin wants to dupe Trump by pandering to the US president’s self-image as a peacemaker to avoid further economic sanctions, while the Russian leader seeks a major military breakthrough in eastern Ukraine, Taras said.

“Putin really believes that until this winter, he will seize something sizeable, or that [his troops] will break through the front line and will dictate terms to Ukraine,” Taras said.

As the Trump administration trumpets the upcoming Alaska summit as a major step towards securing a ceasefire, Ukrainians — civilians and military personnel — and experts are largely pessimistic about the outcomes of the meeting between the US and Russian presidents.

This is partly because of the facts on the ground in eastern Ukraine. Earlier this month, Russia intensified its push to seize key locations in the southeastern Donetsk region, ordering thousands of servicemen to conduct nearly-suicidal missions to infiltrate Ukrainian positions, guarded 24/7 by buzzing drones with night and thermal vision.

In the past three months, Russian forces have occupied some 1,500sq km (580 square miles), mostly in Donetsk, of which Russia controls about three-fourths, according to Ukrainian and Western estimates based on geolocated photos and videos.

The pace is slightly faster than in the past three years.

Within weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, Russia controlled some 27 percent of Ukrainian territory. But Kyiv’s daring counteroffensive and Moscow’s inability to hold onto areas around the capital and in Ukraine’s north resulted in the loss of 9 percent of occupied lands by the fall of 2022.

Russia has since re-occupied less than 1 percent of Ukrainian territory, despite losing hundreds of thousands of servicemen, while pummelling Ukrainian cities almost daily with swarms of drones and missiles. Russia’s push to occupy a “buffer zone” in Ukraine’s northern Sumy region failed as Kyiv’s forces regained most of the occupied ground.

Ukraine also controls a tiny border area in Russia’s western Kursk region, where it started a successful offensive in August 2024, but lost most of its gains earlier this year.

The scepticism in Ukraine over the Alaska meeting is also driven by reports of what the US might offer Putin to try to convince him to stop fighting.

Reports — not denied by Washington — suggest that Trump might offer Moscow full control of Donetsk and the smaller neighbouring Luhansk region. In exchange, Moscow could offer a ceasefire and the freezing of the front line in other Ukrainian regions, as well as the retreat from tiny toeholds in Sumy and the northeastern Kharkiv region, according to the reports.

But to give up Donetsk, Kyiv would have to vacate a “fortress belt” that stretches some 50km (31 miles) along a strategic highway between the towns of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk.

Donetsk’s surrender would “position Russian forces extremely well to renew their attacks on much more favorable terms, having avoided a long and bloody struggle for the ground,” the Institute for the Study of War, a US think tank, said on Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine will not “gift” its land, and that it needs firm security guarantees from the West.

“We don’t need a pause in killings, but a real, long peace. Not a ceasefire some time in the future, in months, but now,” he said in a televised address on Saturday.

Some civilian Ukrainians hold a gloomy view on the prospects of peace, believing that Kyiv’s tilt towards democracy and presumed eventual membership in the European Union, and Moscow’s “imperialistic nature” set up an equation that prevents a sustainable diplomatic solution.

“The war will go on until [either] Ukraine or Russia exist,” Iryna Kvasnevska, a biology teacher in Kyiv whose first cousin was killed in eastern Ukraine in 2023, told Al Jazeera.

But the lack of trust in the Alaska summit for many Ukrainians also stems from a deep lack of faith in Trump himself.

Despite Trump’s recent change in rhetoric and growing public dissatisfaction with Moscow’s reluctance to end the hostilities, the US president has a history of blaming Ukraine – for the war and its demands of its allies – while some of his negotiators have repeated Moscow’s talking points. It is also unclear whether Zelenskyy will be invited to a trilateral meet with Trump and Putin in Alaska, or whether the US will go ahead and seek to shape the future of Ukraine without Kyiv in the room.

“Trump has let us down several times, and the people who believe he won’t do it again are very naive, if not stupid,” Leonid Cherkasin, a retired colonel from the Black Sea port of Odesa who fought pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk in 2014-2015 and suffered contusions, shrapnel and bullet wounds, told Al Jazeera.

“He did threaten Putin a lot in recent weeks, but his actions don’t follow his words,” he said.

He referred to Trump’s pledges during his re-election campaign to “end the war in 24 hours”, and his ultimatums to impose crippling sanctions on Russia if Putin does not show progress in a peace settlement.

Trump’s ultimatum to Putin, initially 50 days long, was reduced to “10 to 12 days” and ended on Friday, one day after the Alaska summit was announced.

Military analysts agree that Putin will not bow to Trump’s and Zelenskyy’s demands.

Meanwhile, the very fact of a face-to-face with Trump heralds a diplomatic victory for Putin, who has become a political pariah in the West and faces child abduction charges that have led the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant against him. Putin last visited the US for bilateral meetings in 2007, only coming for UN summits after that, but not visiting the country since the warrant was issued.

“What’s paramount for Putin is the fact of his conversation with Trump as equals,” Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher with Germany’s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.

“I think the deal will be limited to an agreement on cessation of air strikes, and Putin will get three months to finalise the land operations – that is, to seize the [entire] Donetsk region.”

An air ceasefire may benefit Russia, as it can amass thousands of drones and hundreds of missiles for future attacks. The ceasefire will also stop Ukraine’s increasingly successful drone strikes on military sites, ammunition depots, airfields and oil refineries in Russia or occupied Ukrainian regions.

“Then [Putin] will, of course, fool Trump, and everything will resume,” Mitrokhin said.

UKRAINE’S fight against Putin’s illegal invasion is vital for all of Europe.

The Ukrainian people are fighting bravely for their freedom, their independence and their rights.

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But American security is on the line there, as well as British and European security.

That is why we and European allies have been providers of military aid to Ukraine.

And we recognise the indispensable role of the US in that.

It is also why President Trump’s recent decision to make more weapons available for Ukraine’s brave resistance is very welcome.

And we share the President’s frustration with Putin’s continual delaying tactics and maximalist demands.

It is clear that Putin is not negotiating in good faith.

Tighten screws

The pressure must continue to grow on Putin, to make clear that this awful war, and his wanton campaign of aggression, must come to an end.

As the UK and US get down to hard talks ahead of next week’s summit, Europe must ramp up the pressure, too.

We, as HM Opposition, will not write the Government a blank cheque.

But we stand squarely with them in defending our national interest and that means resisting Putin’s illegal war.

Russia has so far failed to achieve its war objectives.

It has suffered enormous casualties and, in desperation, Putin has had to turn to Iran for weapons and North Korea for troops.

Three years on, and despite what Russia claims, the cost to its economy has been enormous and is unsustainable.

I am proud the Conservative government, working with allies, helped to drive forward the largest and most severe set of sanctions Russia has ever seen to cripple Putin’s war machine.

Through the tough and wide-ranging sanctions delivered by the international community, Putin has been denied $400billion of funds since February 2022 — money that could otherwise have been spent on this illegal war.

But we cannot stop here. The screws must continue to tighten.

Pulling in the same direction

The US is right that we need all the world’s major economies to be pulling in the same direction.

President Trump’s tariffs on India in part show that there can be no place for Russian oil.

Europe must adopt the same approach.

There can be no place for Russian oil on our continent. There must be no safe harbour for Russian ships.

There must be no let-up in our collective fight against Russia in every corner of the continent.

That is why Britain must continue to maintain a leadership position in this fight.

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We must take the lead in mobilising sanctioned Russian sovereign assets to help Ukraine.

We must ensure our Government is using the full weight of the Whitehall legal machine to find more creative mechanisms through which those assets can be legally leveraged to support Ukraine’s military efforts.

And we must encourage all our European partners to do exactly the same.

It is clear that by leveraging our full economic might, and crippling Russia’s, we can continue to support Ukraine, and force Putin to the table.

The entire Euro-Atlantic alliance must be unflinching in the face of Putin’s aggression.

From sanctions, to Operation Interflex and the 100-year Partnership, Britain’s support for Ukraine has been unwavering and must continue to be so.

Shoulder to shoulder

So we must stand up for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and ensure that at no stage is Putin’s aggression rewarded.

Because the lesson of the past 20 years is crystal clear: Putin only comes back for more.

We must stand shoulder to shoulder with our Ukrainian friends as they fight not just an imperialist Russian, but a whole axis of authoritarian states seeking to sow destruction on our own continent.

Ukraine is in a battle for its own sovereignty as well as the principles that underpin our whole way of life — democracy, liberty and the rule of law.

Britain has a history of standing up to threatening authoritarianism.

The invasion of Ukraine demands that we do so again.

We must keep rising to the challenge.

Putin has to know that if he tests the Euro-Atlantic alliance, he will fail.

With US and Russian leaders set to meet in Alaska next week, Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskyy warns deals without his country will not bring peace.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has ruled out Ukraine ceding land to Russia and demanded his country take part in negotiations in comments made before planned talks between the leaders of Russia and the United States.

In a video shared on social media on Saturday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was ready for “real decisions” that could bring a “dignified peace” but stressed there could be no violation of the constitution on territorial issues.

“Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier,” he said, warning that “decisions without Ukraine” would not bring peace.

“They will not achieve anything. These are stillborn decisions. They are unworkable decisions. And we all need real and genuine peace. Peace that people will respect,” added Zelenskyy, whose country has been fighting off a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022.

His comments came hours after US President Donald Trump said a peace deal would involve “some swapping of territories” as he announced a meeting on Friday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the US state of Alaska to discuss the war in Ukraine.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, which also forced millions of people to flee their homes.

Three rounds of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine this year have failed to bear fruit, and it remains unclear whether a summit would bring peace any closer.

On Thursday, Putin said he considers a meeting with Zelenskyy possible but the conditions for such negotiations must be right and the prerequisites for this are still far from being met.

The Russian president did not outline his conditions, but previously, the Kremlin has insisted that Ukraine give up the territories Russia occupies, Western nations stop supplying Ukraine with weapons and they exclude Ukraine from membership in the NATO military alliance.

“There has been a lot of speculation over what a ceasefire agreement could look like in which the lines of contact between Russia and Ukraine could be frozen for a number of years,” Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javad, reporting from Moscow, said.

“It is also not clear whether the Russian demand that NATO’s ambitions in Ukraine should be forever quashed is actually going to be met.”

‘A challenging process’

Ukraine and its European allies have long opposed any agreement that involves ceding occupied territory, but Putin has repeatedly said any deal must require Ukraine to relinquish some of the territories Russia has seized.

Russia declared four Ukrainian regions that it does not fully control – Kherson, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Luhansk – its territory in 2022 and also claims the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Putin aide Yuri Ushakov said the talks between the presidents of Russia and the US next week will “focus on discussing options for achieving a long-term peaceful resolution to the Ukrainian crisis”.

“This will evidently be a challenging process, but we will engage in it actively and energetically,” Ushakov said.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, a close ally of Ukraine, said on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close.

“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” Tusk said at a news conference after talks with Zelenskyy. “There are hopes for this.”

The Alaska summit would be the first between sitting US and Russian presidents since Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva in June 2021.

Trump and Putin last sat together in 2019 at a Group of 20 summit in Japan during Trump’s first term. They have spoken by telephone several times since Trump returned to the White House in January.

Here are the key events on day 1,262 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Saturday, August 9:

Fighting

• A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s southern Odesa region damaged an oil depot owned by Azerbaijan’s state oil company SOCAR, two industry sources told the Reuters news agency on Friday. Four people were wounded in the attack, one of the sources said.
• Ukrainian journalist Viktoria Roshchyna, who died in Russian captivity last year, was buried in Kyiv, while her colleagues called for international pressure to secure the release of other Ukrainian reporters held prisoner by Moscow.

Ceasefire

• United States President Donald Trump will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine on August 15 in Alaska. Trump made the announcement on social media after he said that the parties, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, were close to a ceasefire deal that could resolve the three-year conflict.
• Addressing reporters at the White House earlier on Friday, Trump suggested an agreement would involve some exchange of land. “There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both,” Trump said.
• Putin has presented the Trump administration with a ceasefire proposal that demands major territorial concessions by Kyiv and a push for global recognition of Moscow’s claims on Ukrainian territory in exchange for a halt to fighting, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing European and Ukrainian officials.
• Putin spoke to the leaders of China, India and three ex-Soviet states in a flurry of calls to brief them on his contacts with the US about the war in Ukraine.
• In his evening address to the nation, President Zelenskyy said it was possible to achieve a ceasefire as long as adequate pressure was applied to Russia. He said he had held more than a dozen conversations with leaders of different countries, and his team was in constant contact with the US.

Economy and finance

• Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom will lower the price cap paid for seaborne Russian-origin crude oil to $47.60 from $60 per barrel over Moscow’s war in Ukraine, Ottawa’s Finance Department said in a statement.
• Ukraine is set to receive over 3.2 billion euros ($3.73bn)  in funding after the European Council adopted a decision on the fourth regular disbursement of support under the EU’s Ukraine Facility.
• The funding aims primarily to bolster Ukraine’s macro-financial stability and support the functioning of its public administration, the council said.

United States President Donald Trump has confirmed he will meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on August 15 in Alaska to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

But, Trump added, any peace deal would involve “some swapping” of territory, a controversial prospect.

“We are going to have a meeting with Russia. We’ll start off with Russia,” he said on Friday, as he hosted leaders from Armenia and Azerbaijan at the White House.

Trump offered few details on what, if anything, had changed in his months-long effort to bring about a deal to end Russia’s invasion.

Still, he suggested any breakthrough would require the exchange of territory.

“It’s very complicated. But we’re going to get some back, and we’re going to get some switched. There’ll be some swapping of territories to the betterment of both, but we’ll be talking about that either later or tomorrow,” he said.

Ukraine and its European allies have long opposed any agreement that involves ceding occupied territory – including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia – to Russia.

But Putin has repeatedly said that any deal must require Ukraine to relinquish some of the territories Russia has seized since 2014.

He has also called for a pause to Western aid for Ukraine and an end to Kyiv’s efforts to join the NATO military alliance.

Questions about the meeting’s location

Still, the prospect of Trump meeting Putin has raised logistical questions in recent days, particularly since the Russian leader faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Prosecutors have sought his arrest for alleged war crimes perpetrated in Ukraine, and Putin’s travel through any ICC member countries could result in his detention.

The US, however, is not an ICC member and does not recognise the court’s authority.

While the Kremlin had previously floated the possibility of meeting in the United Arab Emirates, another non-member, Trump announced on Friday in a Truth Social post that he would welcome Putin to the US northernmost state, Alaska.

The state’s mainland sits approximately 88 kilometres – or 55 miles – away from Russia across the Bering Strait, and some smaller islands are even closer.

Friday’s announcement came on the same day as a deadline that Trump had imposed on Russia to reach a ceasefire passed without any new agreement.

In recent weeks, Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with Russia over the country’s continued attacks on Ukraine and its apparent unwillingness to come to an accord.

The August 15 meeting is slated to be the first tete-a-tete between the two leaders since 2019, during Trump’s first term.

‘Great progress’

Trump had broken with decades of diplomatic precedent by seeming to embrace Putin during much of his time in the White House.

Earlier this year, for instance, Trump appeared to reject Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in favour of Putin. He also blamed Ukraine’s ambitions of joining NATO for provoking Russia’s full-scale invasion of its territory in February 2022.

“Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump yelled at one point during a confrontational meeting with Zelenskyy broadcast from the White House in February.

But Trump has positioned himself as a self-described “peacemaker”, and his inability to bring the Ukraine war to a close has become a source of resentment between him and Putin.

At the same time, he took an initially permissive approach to Putin, but has since expressed growing frustration with the Russian leader amid Russia’s continued attacks.

Last week, Trump denounced Russia’s renewed attacks on Kyiv. “I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting,” he said.

He also demanded that Russia pause its attacks or face new sanctions and secondary tariffs on key trading partners.

On Wednesday, Trump appeared to begin to make good on that threat, raising tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent in response to its purchase of Russian oil.

Still, this week, Trump hailed “great progress” in the peace negotiations as his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, visited Putin in Moscow.

But as of Friday, the date of the new deadline, no new US actions or Russian capitulations had been announced.

Some analysts have argued that Putin is intentionally teasing out talks to extend the war.

It remains unclear if Trump’s mercurial approach has meaningfully changed the ceasefire equation since he took office.

China’s President Xi Jinping has told Russia’s Vladimir Putin he is pleased to see Moscow maintain contact with the United States to advance a political resolution of the Ukraine crisis.

The remarks during a phone call between the two leaders on Friday come after the Kremlin said President Putin would meet US President Donald Trump in the coming days.

During the phone call, Xi said China would maintain its stance on the need for peace talks and a diplomatic solution to the Russia-Ukraine war, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The Kremlin said Putin had called his Chinese counterpart to update him on the latest US-Russia talks, during which Xi expressed support for a “long-term” solution to the Ukraine conflict.

The call between Xi and Putin was their second in less than two months. Putin is expected to visit China in September for events marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The two countries have further bolstered their economic, trade and security cooperation since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which triggered a sharp deterioration in Moscow’s relations with the West.

China has never denounced Russia’s war nor called for it to withdraw its troops, and many of Ukraine’s allies believe that Beijing has provided support to Moscow. Beijing insists it is a neutral party, regularly calling for an end to the fighting while also accusing Western countries of prolonging the conflict by arming Ukraine.

Trump has voiced growing frustration with Putin over the lack of progress towards peace in Ukraine and has threatened to impose heavy tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, including China.

The US president on Wednesday said he could announce further tariffs on China similar to the 25 percent duties he has already imposed on India over its purchases of Russian oil.

In response to those remarks, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday that Beijing’s trade and energy cooperation with Russia was “just and legitimate”.

“We will continue to take reasonable measures to ensure energy security based on our own national interests,” Guo Jiakun said in a statement.

Calls with other allies

Putin and Trump are set to hold talks, although no firm date or venue has been set. Both sides have confirmed preparations for a summit are under way and have suggested that a meeting could take place next week.

China has been mentioned in media reports as a possible venue for the Putin-Trump summit, with speculation that Trump could join Putin there in early September.

The Kremlin also said Putin had spoken to the leaders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and briefed them on talks he held with US envoy Steve Witkoff on Wednesday.

Putin also discussed Ukraine in a phone call with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, the Belarusian state news agency BelTA reported.

Indian President Narendra Modi also held a phone call with Putin to discuss the situation in Ukraine and bilateral relations.

“Had a very good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin. I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine,” Modi said on X.

The Indian president added that he looked forward to hosting Putin in India later this year, without specifying the date.

Had a very good and detailed conversation with my friend President Putin. I thanked him for sharing the latest developments on Ukraine. We also reviewed the progress in our bilateral agenda, and reaffirmed our commitment to further deepen the India-Russia Special and Privileged…

— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 8, 2025

Pause in conflict may be ‘close’

The calls came amid rising hopes for a breakthrough in the Ukraine war, now in its fourth year. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday that a pause in the conflict could be close, after speaking to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Tusk said Zelenskyy was “very cautious but optimistic” and that Ukraine was keen that Poland and other European countries play a role in planning for a ceasefire and an eventual peace settlement.

“There are certain signals, and we also have an intuition, that perhaps a freeze in the conflict – I don’t want to say the end, but a freeze in the conflict – is closer than it is further away,” he told a news conference on Friday. “There are hopes for this.”

Trump’s efforts to pressure Putin into stopping the fighting have so far delivered little progress. Russia’s bigger army is slowly advancing deeper into Ukraine while it relentlessly bombards Ukrainian cities. Russia and Ukraine are far apart on their terms for peace.

Almost two weeks ago, Trump moved up his ultimatum to impose additional sanctions on Russia, as well as introduce secondary tariffs targeting countries that buy Russian oil, if no Kremlin moves towards a settlement were forthcoming.

The deadline expired on Friday. It was unclear what steps Trump intended to take as a consequence.

Here are the key events on day 1,261 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Friday, August 8:

Fighting

• The Ukrainian military said its drone units hit the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar region. It was not immediately clear what the extent of the damage was at the refinery, which, together with the Krasnodar refinery, processed 7.2 million metric tonnes of crude oil in 2024.
• Local Russian emergency services said they had extinguished a fire at the Afipsky refinery, saying it was caused by fallen drone debris. The Russian Ministry of Defence said air defence systems had shot down nine Ukrainian drones in the region overnight.
• Russia’s Defence Ministry said air defence systems also shot down eight British-made Storm Shadow missiles launched by the Ukrainian army over the past 24 hours.
• Russia also hit a Ukrainian railway hub used for transferring weapons and military equipment to Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, the ministry added.
• Gas supplies continued on Thursday through the Orlovka interconnector in southern Ukraine, which was attacked by Russian drones on Wednesday, the Ukrainian gas transmission operator said.

Ceasefire

• Russia’s Deputy United Nations Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy said that Russian President Vladimir Putin may meet with United States President Donald Trump next week, but said he was not aware of any planned meeting between Putin and Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
• Trump said Putin does not have to agree to meet with Zelenskyy in order to have a meeting with him.
• Putin said that the United Arab Emirates is one of the suitable locations to hold a meeting with Trump.

• Putin added that he was not “on the whole” against meeting Zelenskyy, adding that “certain conditions should be created” for such a meeting. He stressed that the current situation was “far” from being ready for it.
• French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed France’s full support for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the launch of talks aimed at reaching a lasting and solid peace, following a “long discussion” with Zelenskyy and other European leaders.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she had spoken with Zelenskyy about the developments of the last days and next steps.
• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the conflict in Ukraine during a phone call with his Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

Sanctions and tariffs

• Russia and India stressed their commitment to a “strategic partnership” in bilateral security talks in Moscow, a day after Trump announced higher tariffs on imports from India because of its purchases of Russian oil.
• Russia’s Interfax news agency quoted Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval as saying that New Delhi was looking forward to a visit from Putin by the end of the year.

• Russia’s central bank has tweaked its rules for non-residents, allowing foreigners’ funds from special type-C accounts to pass to Russian investors when involved in the exchange of assets, a move that could free up blocked capital in Russia and abroad.
• As Russia sought to ratchet up military production for the war in Ukraine, a state-owned explosives manufacturer circumvented Western sanctions by purchasing equipment made by Germany’s Siemens from a middleman that imports technology from China, the Reuters news agency reported.

Regional developments

• Zelenskyy said he discussed a new financial assistance programme that will “strengthen Ukrainians now and in the post-war period” on a call with International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva.
• Russia said it had protested to Italy this week over what it called “odious” anti-Russian statements, in an ongoing row over the cancellation of a concert by Russian conductor Valery Gergiev in Italy.