The Evening: Trump’s strategy for Putin talks

August 13, 2025

	By Matthew Cullen

Good evening. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

Strategizing ahead of Trump-Putin talks
A water crisis in Kabul
Plus, the beauty of bodega ramps

Friedrich Merz walks next to Volodymyr Zelensky in front of a blue helicopter.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Berlin today. Pool photo by Filip Singer

Trump and Europe settled on a strategy for talks with Putin

European leaders said today that they had hammered out a strategy with President Trump for his meeting later this week with Vladimir Putin. Under the plan, the leaders said, Trump will demand a cease-fire before serious truce talks begin and will insist that Ukraine be included in any peace negotiations.

The strategy emerged during a video call that Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, hastily arranged in an effort to push the American leader to back Ukraine’s demands. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his European allies had voiced concern that Putin would use the meeting to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Ukraine — or worse, to set the stage for a repeat of the Yalta summit.

But after today’s meeting, Merz assured reporters that Trump “largely shares” Europe’s plan for ending the war. Trump also sounded pleased with the discussion: “We had a very good call,” he said. “I would rate it a 10. Very friendly.”

Merz and Zelensky told reporters that the principles that Trump had agreed upon for the talks with Putin also included an insistence on security guarantees for Ukraine. Still, Trump is famously mercurial. His meeting with Putin in Alaska on Friday will be a critical test of his longtime affinity for his Russian counterpart.

On the battlefield: Russian forces are closing in on the eastern Ukrainian city of Dobropillia, prompting urgent evacuations of residents just six miles from the front line.

Eric Lee for The New York Times

Trump can withhold billions in aid, an appeals court ruled

A panel of federal judges cleared the way for the Trump administration to continue refusing to spend billions of dollars in foreign aid. The court ruled, in a 2-to-1 vote, that aid organizations that had sued to recover the money lacked the legal right to bring the challenge. Those funds included nearly $4 billion for global health activities, and more than $6 billion for H.I.V./AIDS programs.

The judges on the panel explained that only the Government Accountability Office, which serves as Congress’s independent watchdog, could challenge the president’s efforts to withhold foreign aid funding. The court’s decision was a major victory for Trump, who has repeatedly claimed expansive authority of federal spending.

In other Trump administration news:

National Guard troops began to deploy in Washington. We fact-checked Trump’s statements about crime in the city.
Cuts by the Trump administration have brought funding into research on health disparities to a halt.

A man in a jacket, scarf and long tunic looks over a body of water, with mountains in the background.

The Shakardara dam, outside Kabul. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

Kabul could soon be out of water

The population in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, has grown roughly sixfold over the last quarter century, but no decent water management system has been put in place. The result, combined with periods of scarce rainfall, is a rapid drying out of the area’s water basins.

Now, Kabul’s six million people are at risk of being without water by 2030. The Taliban government is scrambling to fix the problem, but time is running short and its financial capabilities are limited: Even the national environmental agency relies on a tanker delivering 2,600 gallons a day.

Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

Trump is planning to host the Kennedy Center Honors

Months ago, the president suggested that the Kennedy Center Honors ought to be hosted by “the king of ratings” — a nickname he bestowed on himself. Today, Trump made it official.

In December, the president said, he will host an event celebrating this year’s honorees: the actor Sylvester Stallone, the rock band Kiss, the recording artists George Strait and Gloria Gaynor and the British actor Michael Crawford. Trump said he had vetted the list himself and had rejected several prospective honorees whom he called “wokesters.”

More top news

New York City: In the first half of the year, companies in the city added just 956 private-sector jobs — its slowest growth outside a recession in decades.
Europe: Wildfires raged in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Montenegro and Albania amid a continental heat wave. Track the heat.
Israel: In the nearly two years since the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, the country has not charged or prosecuted anyone for them.
Alaska: Residents of Juneau have been urged to evacuate after glacial melt caused a lake to overflow, threatening record-breaking levels on the Mendenhall River.
Business: Nearly eight in 10 companies have reported using generative A.I., but just as many have reported “no significant bottom-line impact.”
Entertainment: Quibi may have failed, but Chinese studios have made very-short-form TV work. A Hollywood start-up is trying again with the medium in the U.S.
Nature: Beech leaf disease, first observed in 2012 in northeast Ohio, has made its way to 15 states and into Ontario. Scientists are racing to stop the disease from damaging forests.

TIME TO UNWIND

A smiling chef spoons sauce over a dish in a spotless professional kitchen

Eleven Madison Park’s chef, Daniel Humm. Daniel Krieger for The New York Times

Meat is back at one of N.Y.C.’s most acclaimed restaurants

Eleven Madison Park, the elegant and incredibly expensive Manhattan restaurant, announced today that it was bringing meat back to its menu.

Its chef, Daniel Humm, was the talk of the restaurant world four years ago when he made a climate-minded decision to move to an all-vegan menu. Now, he is reversing course in an effort to attract more diners. “It’s hard to get 30 people for a corporate dinner to come to a plant-based restaurant,” he said.

Video Illustration by Bobby Doherty

Steve Buscemi is glad people are watching

Almost no one straddles the line between fame and obscurity quite like Steve Buscemi.

He perfected the role of an affable schmuck in some of the most acclaimed films and TV shows of the past 40 years, including “Fargo” and “The Sopranos,” while fiercely protecting his private life. Everyone knows of Buscemi, but almost none of us pronounce his name correctly (it’s Boo-SEM-ee, not Boo-SHEH-mee).

We talked with Buscemi about his new role in Season 2 of “Wednesday,” a Netflix show from the Addams Family canon that’s the streamer’s most popular English-language show ever. “It’s nice and exciting to be in a show that people actually know about,” he said.