𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

After Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Donald Trump described the Russian leader in positive terms.”I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart,” Trump said at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

In a radio interview that week, he suggested that Vladimir Putin was going into Ukraine to “be a peacekeeper.”

Trump repeatedly said the invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if he had been in the White House — a claim Putin endorsed while lending his support to Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

“I couldn’t disagree with him that if he had been president, if they hadn’t stolen victory from him in 2020, the crisis that emerged in Ukraine in 2022 could have been avoided,” he said.

Russia appears to be preparing to test its new nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered cruise missile, according to two US researchers and a Western security source, even as Russian president Vladimir Putin readies for talks on Ukraine with US president DonaldTrump tomorrow.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and Decker Eveleth of the CNA research and analysis organisation, based in Virginia, reached their assessments separately by studying imagery taken in recent weeks until Tuesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm.

They agreed the photos showed extensive activity at the Pankovo test site on the Barents Sea archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, including increases in personnel and equipment and ships and aircraft associated with earlier tests of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel).

“We can see all of the activity at the test site, which is both huge amounts of supplies coming in to support operations and movement at the place where they actually launch the missile,” Lewis said.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky will meet with prime minister Keir Starmer in Downing Street later today, part of a final push for a European perspective to be heard ahead of a summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.

We’ll bring you more details on exactly when the meeting will take place, but its likely to be little more than 24 hours before the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.

Sir Keir and Trump both joined a teleconference with European leaders including Zelensky yesterday.

“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 Downing Street office said in a statement yesterday.

Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had struck a number of Ukrainian missile plants, weapons design bureaus and rocket fuel productions enterprises with missiles and drones in July.

Russian forces destroyed a number of Western missile defence systems – including Patriot launchers and fire control radar in the Dnipropetrovsk and Sumy regions – that had been deployed to defend the plants, the ministry said in an update this morning.

“An attempt by the Kyiv regime, together with its Western partners, to organise the production of missiles to carry out attacks deep into the territory of the Russian Federation was thwarted,” the ministry said.

“We’re going to have a meeting with Vladimir Putin,” he told a news conference at the White House. “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. Cos that’s what I do – I make deals.”

It’s typical Trump: boastful, bereft of meaning and utterly unconvincing.

On Friday, when Trump welcomes the Russian president to talks in Alaska, like a python eyeing a particularly plump suckling piglet, Putin will squeeze the spirit out of him, and then eat him for breakfast, as he has on each and every occasion when this tragically unevenly matched pair have had cause to interact.

Any peace deal that would see Ukraine cede territory to Russia in hopes of ending the war would be deeply unpopular with the Ukrainian people.

It would also be illegal under the country’s constitution.

Kyiv “will not give Russia any awards for what it has done”, Mr Zelensky said.

From Trump’s perspective, the summit may be part of his drive for a Nobel Peace Prize by ending Putin’s war against Ukraine using the “art of the deal”. Putin, however, is likely to prevail and his agenda is the art of the steal – specifically a massive grab of his neighbour’s land.

Missing from the meeting is the country most affected – Ukraine itself. Led by Volodymyr Zelensky, it has held out against the Kremlin for 11 years.

The Russian president will fly into Anchorage, Alaska, where he will meet his US counterpart at a remote military installation which plays host to some of America’s most fearsome fighter jets. It has been visited by several US presidents in the past.

Europe’s leaders, including Keir Starmer, have been corralling US officials and White House insiders, and met virtually with the Oval Office to try to persuade Trump to use the leverage he has over Putin to get him to agree to a ceasefire.

In an ironic twist, US president Donald Trump is set to discuss the war in Ukraine with Russian leader Vladimir Putin at a military base in Alaska that was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the height of Cold War and still plays a role today.

The meeting is scheduled to take place Friday at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, according to a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

The base created by merging Elmendorf Air Force Base and Army Fort Richardson in 2010 has played a key strategic role in monitoring and deterring the Soviet Union during much of the Cold War.

Throughout its long history, the base hosted large numbers of aircraft and oversaw operations of a variety of early warning radar sites that were aimed at detecting Soviet military activity and any possible nuclear launches. It earned the motto “Top Cover for North America” at this time, according to the base website.

While much of the military hardware has since been deactivated, the base still hosts key aircraft squadrons, including the F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jet. Planes from the base also still intercept Russian aircraft that regularly fly into US airspace.