The Morning: Ukraine’s fate
Good morning. Here's the latest:
More news is below. But first, we have a primer on today's summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine's fate
Trump and Putin meet today in Alaska to discuss the future of the Ukraine war. Not present: anyone from Ukraine. The facts are not in flux. The battle lines have barely shifted over the last few years. The objectives of Russia and Ukraine haven't changed, either. And yet anything could happen — because nobody knows what Trump will do. In the last seven months, his positions on the war have swung wildly. He humiliated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. Then he questioned Putin's honesty and threatened to place harsher sanctions on Moscow; he seemed to have changed his tune. Then last week, Trump abruptly gave the Russian president his long-desired one-on-one meeting — and left Zelensky off the guest list. Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump will cut a deal with Putin. What should we expect from today's meeting? David Sanger, a White House and national security reporter, explains some possibilities:
What to knowIt's hard to remember the important milestones on the road to Alaska. Here are some ways to understand the war: Who's winning? It's not quite a stalemate. Russia has captured large tracts of Ukraine — but not nearly as much as Putin wants. After Ukraine decimated Russia's underequipped forces in 2022, the Russian president re-engineered his country to serve the war. Russia has paid huge sums to recruit new soldiers and invested heavily in Iranian-designed drones. Putin has been willing to sacrifice his own soldiers, incurring about twice as many casualties as Ukraine. This multimedia story by Times journalists in Europe shows how the grinding war of attrition favors Russia.
Ukraine can still hurt Russia. It has shown how drone warfare can make up for having less money and fewer soldiers. Consider Operation Spider's Web, Ukraine's sneak attack that caused billions of dollars in damage deep inside Russia. The drones it used cost as little as $600 each. Listen to this fascinating episode of "The Daily" about the operation. The Trump-Putin relationship. Trump seems to hold Russia's president in high esteem, reflecting his general admiration for strongmen. He's still annoyed about accusations that Russian interference in 2016 helped him get elected. As Mark Mazzetti, an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., put it, "Mr. Trump's anger about what he calls the 'Russia hoax' has festered for years, a grievance so deep he now sees Mr. Putin as his ally in victimhood." The war that changed war. Thousands of drones have turned the skies over Ukraine (and sometimes Russia) into a lethal laboratory. It has spurred a Darwinian contest to see who can dominate the conflict — and perhaps every conflict thereafter. Read this mind-blowing story by C.J. Chivers, a former Marine who documented the drone arms race.
Don't forget what this is actually about. The war may have reshaped global politics, but it's being fought by real people. Civilians have suffered grievously. Spend some time with the work of my photojournalist colleagues who have recently covered the evacuees fleeing a Russian advance, severely wounded Ukrainian soldiers who returned to the fight and the human cost of Russia's intensified attacks.
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