Good morning. Vladimir Putin ticks off Donald Trump and Ukraine gets some of the weapons it needs – more on that below, along with the latest on Canada’s wildfires and early ticket pricing on next year’s World Cup. But first:

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Donald Trump seems to have reached a new conclusion about Vladimir Putin: For all their pleasant conversations – half a dozen since Trump returned to the White House – the Russian President has no real interest in ending his war in Ukraine. “I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, ‘Well, that was a nice phone call,’ and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump said yesterday. “After that happens three or four times, you say, ‘The talk doesn’t mean anything.’”

So Trump decided to dispense with the carrot – praising Putin as a “genius” who should be invited back into the G7 – and try his hand at the stick. In an Oval Office press conference yesterday alongside NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the President announced a deal to provide more U.S.-made weapons to Ukraine, with NATO members footing the bill.

Details remain relatively scarce: Trump said the U.S. would send over “billions” of dollars of “top of the line” equipment, including Patriot missile defence systems, that would be distributed quickly to the battlefield. Rutte added that many NATO allies, Canada among them, signalled they want to be part of rearming Ukraine. One specific threat, however, was issued to Moscow. Trump insisted that the U.S. would impose 100-per-cent tariffs on Russia unless Putin reached a ceasefire in 50 days.

It’s hard to know how committed Trump is to the Sept. 2 deadline – he’s doled out plenty of tariff reprieves over the past few months. And Russia doesn’t actually sell that much to the United States. In 2023, its exports totalled less than US$5-billion. By last year, the number was down to about US$3-billion. (Canada, by contrast, sent roughly US$435-billion in goods across the border in 2024.) There is currently a bill in the U.S. Senate that would impose sanctions on any country that buys oil from Moscow, including China and India, which would deal a bigger blow to Russia’s economy. Trump didn’t mention these sanctions directly in the Oval Office yesterday, but a White House official said they were on the table.

Putin might not be moved either way. Russia has escalated its attacks on Ukrainian cities recently, convinced that its edge in the 40-month war is growing. Last month, Russia launched 10 times as many missiles and drones as it did in June of 2024, according to the UN, killing 232 people and wounding 1,300 others – the highest civilian casualties of any month in the past three years. Last week, it fired 728 drones at Ukraine in a single evening, the most so far in the war. That assault came just a handful of hours after Trump and Putin spoke on the phone. The next day, according to Rutte, Trump called him to say Ukraine should have the weapons it needs to defend itself, as long as NATO allies paid for them.

Perhaps Trump is acting out of pique now; that’s been known to happen before. It’s still vindication for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was essentially booted from the White House back in February, and who pitched this exact workaround for American weapons at the NATO summit two weeks ago. There’s no word yet on Trump’s plan for the US$1.25-billion aid package to Ukraine, which runs out later this summer. But Zelensky wasted zero time yesterday getting Trump on the line to express his gratitude. “We agreed to catch up more often by phone,” Zelensky posted after their conversation. “Thank you, Mr. President!”

There were nearly 450 air quality warnings across the country yesterday, as more than 560 wildfires burned in Western and Northern Canada – at least 140 of them out of control. Read the latest on the wildfires here and find out how to protect your lungs here.

At home: Alberta has surpassed the entire United States in confirmed measles cases, with more than 1,300 cases since the beginning of March.

Abroad: France celebrated Bastille Day with fireworks, flyovers and Foreign Legion troops each wearing a leather apron and carrying an axe.

At the border: A county in northeastern Maine looks for the words to tell Canadians how much it misses us.