Putin heads to Trump summit confident he is winning in Ukraine

MOSCOW – Mr Vladimir Putin is heading to a planned summit on Aug 15 with Mr Donald Trump confident that Russia is in a dominant position on the battlefield as his military advances in Ukraine.

That is likely to strengthen his determination to secure major territorial concessions when the Russian and US presidents meet in Alaska in return for a ceasefire that Mr Putin has so far been reluctant to concede to Mr Trump.

Russian forces

broke through Ukrainian defences

in the eastern Donetsk region around villages leading to the town of Dobropillya, according to the Deep State monitoring platform, which maintains cooperation with Ukraine’s Defence Ministry.

They are consolidating positions and probing for weak points in defences to try to reach the road linking the town and the strategic city of Kramatorsk.

Mr Putin and Mr Trump are set to meet as Russia’s army grinds out gains in a summer campaign that is putting Ukrainian defences under mounting pressure, so far without achieving a decisive advance.

The Russian president has repeatedly rejected calls from Mr Trump, Ukraine and European leaders to agree to a ceasefire to allow for negotiations on a peace deal to end

the full-scale invasion

that is now in its fourth year.

“Putin has much stronger cards to play than his opponents,” said Ms Marina Miron, a military researcher at the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. “The Russian army is on the offensive, and they are dictating the rules.”

Only a few lightly armed Russians bypassed defences around Dobropillya, and Ukraine is working to restore control, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told reporters on Aug 12.

Moscow wants to create the impression that “Russia’s advancing and Ukraine’s losing” ahead of the Alaska summit, he said.

Still, Ukrainian forces face a difficult situation in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, though they have had successes in pushing back Russian troops in Luhansk and in the northern Sumy region, Mr Zelensky said.

Russia may be relocating as many as 30,000 experienced combat troops from Sumy towards the frontlines in the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions in preparation for an offensive by the end of August, he said.

Chess pieces on the board

Mr Trump has expressed disappointment at Mr Putin’s intransigence following six phone calls.

He threatened to

impose secondary tariffs

on countries buying Russian oil unless the Kremlin agreed to a truce.

But after talks in Moscow last week between Mr Putin and US envoy Steve Witkoff, the two sides announced their first summit meeting since Mr Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Mr Zelensky and European allies

plan a call with Mr Trump

on Aug 13, amid fears the US leader may concede too much to Mr Putin in return for a deal to halt the fighting.

While Mr Trump’s pushing for Russia to end the war, Mr Putin wants Kyiv to withdraw its forces fully from the Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine before he will agree to any truce.

That would hand his army a victory in Ukraine’s so-called Donbas area that it has been unable to achieve on the battlefield since Russia first incited fighting there in 2014.

US and Russian officials have also been discussing a deal that would halt the war along current battle lines, leaving Russia in control of the parts of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that it currently occupies, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Mr Zelensky said Ukraine

will not cede any of its territory

to Russia. Territorial issues cannot be separated from security guarantees for his country because “for Russians, Donbas is a bridgehead for a future new offensive”, he said.

Mr Trump told reporters on Aug 11 that there may be “some changes” in land as part of an agreement.

“We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines,” he said.

Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte also said at the weekend that territory would “have to be on the table” along with security guarantees for Ukraine.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas pushed back on Aug 11, saying “we should not even discuss any concessions” with Mr Putin until Russia agrees to a full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine.

Conceding to Mr Putin’s demand for territory could deliver some of the most fortified Ukrainian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia while allowing him to avoid potentially massive troop losses from months of attritional warfare.

Putin’s cards

Deepening manpower shortages are adding to stresses on Ukraine’s defensive lines.

“Ukraine does not have enough soldiers and infantry, and that’s clearly the most significant challenge,” said Mr Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, who has recently visited Ukraine’s frontlines.

“The question here is really about sustainability” if the war were to extend into 2026 and beyond, he said.

While the frontline is not in danger of collapse, Russian pressure is mounting, and Moscow’s use of its own offensive “line of drones” known as Rubicon has narrowed Ukraine’s advantage in this field, Mr Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a July 31 assessment on social media following a visit to the front.

“Russian forces continue to adapt, and Ukraine must find ways to stay ahead,” he said.

Russia may be focusing on its advance toward Dobropillya “to set informational conditions” ahead of the summit with Mr Trump, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

Mr Putin is attempting to frame the seizure of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions “as inevitable to push Ukraine and the West to capitulate to Kremlin demands”, it said in an Aug 11 assessment.

Even a failure to reach an agreement in Alaska may serve Mr Putin’s interest if it buys him time to continue his offensive while persuading Mr Trump to delay the threatened US secondary tariffs as talks continue on a potential settlement.

Russian forces have captured some 2,400 sq km in Ukraine so far this in 2025, about 0.4 per cent of the country’s territory, according to Bloomberg estimates based on Deep State mapping data.

“Five key factors we assess are critical to determining the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war, such as financial power, manpower, firepower, morale and territorial control, indicate that Russia’s advantage continues to grow,” said Mr Alex Kokcharov, Bloomberg Geoeconomics analyst. “Moscow probably believes that it has a significant advantage over Ukraine, and that time is on its side.” BLOOMBERG