US President Donald Trump has expressed his willingness to facilitate substantive peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in an effort to achieve lasting peace. Trump commented on the upcoming August 15 US-Russia summit in Alaska, saying it was not his job to make a deal with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to end Russia's war in Ukraine.
This is according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
Trump said that "a deal has to be made for both Russia and Ukraine", suggesting that the United States will not seek a US-Russia-brokered agreement that would exclude Ukraine during the Alaskan summit. He will brief Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders about his upcoming meeting with Putin. Trump said that a meeting between Zelensky and Putin would follow the Alaska summit — suggesting that the United States is interested in facilitating substantive peace talks that include Ukraine in its negotiations with Russia.
Trump signaled that the United States would seek to return some of Ukraine’s economically and strategically important territories during the peace process. Trump noted that Russian forces currently occupy "some very important territories" in Ukraine and that the United States will "try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine".
Trump did not specify what he considered "important" territory, only briefly noting that Russia has seized "a lot of ocean real estate" and that Ukraine maintains control only of the coastline in the Odessa region. The mention of "important" Trump's reference to territory likely refers to the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, given his discussions of ocean or river territory and his mention of Odessa region. Zaporizhia and Kherson regions have an abundance of economically and strategically important land and offer much wider access to the Black Sea and the Dnieper River. Ukraine's access to the Black Sea is crucial for Ukraine's significant export market, especially for agricultural products and minerals.
Ukraine is also rich in important raw materials, and Russia's direct access to the Black Sea could allow Russia to receive significant revenue streams related to the export of raw materials from Ukraine. Ukraine's access to the Dnieper River and the buffer zone around it is of operational importance because the river acts as a natural defensible barrier. Allowing Russia to maintain control of the eastern (left) bank of Kherson Oblast would put Russia in a much more advantageous position to conduct offensive operations against the western (right) bank of Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odessa Oblasts, given how the current Ukrainian positions along the Dnieper River, if frozen, would have the necessary operational depth to prevent a second Russian invasion.
Constant Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes are currently preventing Russian forces from accumulating engineering and bridging equipment to cross the Dnieper River into Kherson Oblast, but a future ceasefire would prevent such strikes. Zaporizhia Oblast is also home to Europe's largest nuclear power plant, the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), which supplied about a fifth of Ukraine's electricity before the war, and Russian forces have occupied the facility since March 2022.
The Trump administration had previously tried to negotiate an agreement to provide joint Ukrainian and American control of the ZNPP, which Russia explicitly rejected in the spring of 2025.
Trump said that fear of the impact of US sanctions on Russia and its economic partners had prompted Putin to propose a bilateral summit. Trump said the Russian economy was "not doing well right now".
Trump said that the announcement of a 50% tariff on India's imports of Russian oil was also not helping the Russian economy and was "a big blow" to countries that buy Russian oil. Trump said he was "ready" to impose much more significant economic restrictions, but that Trump "had a call that Russian officials would like to meet". Trump correctly pointed out that the Russian economy is a liability that the United States, Europe, and Ukraine can use to reduce Russia's ability to continue its war in Ukraine. Putin has long espoused a theory of victory that is based on the assumption that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West, including by relying on Russian partners to sustain the Russian economy and military machine.
ISW continues to assess that strong economic measures by the US and other Western countries against Russia, combined with timely and sufficient Western military assistance to Ukraine, could allow Ukraine to inflict more serious losses on the battlefield on Russia and thus challenge Putin's theory of victory.
Ukraine continued its campaign of long-range drone strikes against Russian defense industrial infrastructure on the night of August 10-11.
Ukrainian television broadcaster "Suspilne" reported that sources from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said that Ukrainian forces carried out a long-range drone strike against the Arzamas Instrument Plant in Arzamas, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, which produces components for the Kh-32 and Kh-101 missiles.
A geolocated photo shows damage to a building at the plant, and footage shows a fire in the building.