The Morning: Ukraine’s fate

August 15, 2025

Good morning. Here’s the latest:

D.C. takeover: The attorney general, Pam Bondi, rescinded policies that restricted the city’s police from aiding immigration enforcement. She also named an “emergency police commissioner.”
California: Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a campaign for a proposition that would ask the state’s voters to approve a new congressional map. More than a dozen border patrol agents showed up outside.
SpaceX: Elon Musk’s rocket company has received billions in federal contracts. But years of losses have most likely allowed it to pay little to no federal income taxes since its founding, according to internal documents.

More news is below. But first, we have a primer on today’s summit between President Trump and Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin looking at President Trump, who is out of focus in the foreground.

In Helsinki, Finland, in 2018. Doug Mills/The New York Times

Ukraine’s fate

By Adam Pasick

I’m a deputy international editor.

Trump and Putin meet today in Alaska to discuss the future of the Ukraine war. Not present: anyone from Ukraine.

The facts are not in flux. The battle lines have barely shifted over the last few years. The objectives of Russia and Ukraine haven’t changed, either.

And yet anything could happen — because nobody knows what Trump will do. In the last seven months, his positions on the war have swung wildly. He humiliated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. Then he questioned Putin’s honesty and threatened to place harsher sanctions on Moscow; he seemed to have changed his tune.

Then last week, Trump abruptly gave the Russian president his long-desired one-on-one meeting — and left Zelensky off the guest list. Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump will cut a deal with Putin.

What should we expect from today’s meeting? David Sanger, a White House and national security reporter, explains some possibilities:

A cease-fire. Ukraine and Europe say this must precede negotiations. Putin has resisted.
Land swaps. Trump and Putin may try to redraw Ukraine’s borders, solidifying some of Russia’s battlefield gains. Ukraine strongly opposes this idea.
Security guarantees. A deal could include a promise that Western nations will protect Ukraine from future Russian aggression.
NATO repudiation. The alliance says Ukraine can join eventually. Putin would prefer never, and Trump appears sympathetic to his view.
A grand bargain. Putin is bringing a business delegation, possibly to talk about access to minerals. He also mentioned a possible replacement for the New START nuclear treaty.

What to know

It’s hard to remember the important milestones on the road to Alaska. Here are some ways to understand the war:

Who’s winning? It’s not quite a stalemate. Russia has captured large tracts of Ukraine — but not nearly as much as Putin wants. After Ukraine decimated Russia’s underequipped forces in 2022, the Russian president re-engineered his country to serve the war. Russia has paid huge sums to recruit new soldiers and invested heavily in Iranian-designed drones. Putin has been willing to sacrifice his own soldiers, incurring about twice as many casualties as Ukraine. This multimedia story by Times journalists in Europe shows how the grinding war of attrition favors Russia.

A map of eastern Ukraine. The territory held by Russia is highlighted, with the smaller areas Russia has gained since Jan. 1 colored in a dark red.

Source: Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (extent of Russia-controlled areas). As of Aug. 13. | By The New York Times

Ukraine can still hurt Russia. It has shown how drone warfare can make up for having less money and fewer soldiers. Consider Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine’s sneak attack that caused billions of dollars in damage deep inside Russia. The drones it used cost as little as $600 each. Listen to this fascinating episode of “The Daily” about the operation.

The Trump-Putin relationship. Trump seems to hold Russia’s president in high esteem, reflecting his general admiration for strongmen. He’s still annoyed about accusations that Russian interference in 2016 helped him get elected. As Mark Mazzetti, an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., put it, “Mr. Trump’s anger about what he calls the ‘Russia hoax’ has festered for years, a grievance so deep he now sees Mr. Putin as his ally in victimhood.”

The war that changed war. Thousands of drones have turned the skies over Ukraine (and sometimes Russia) into a lethal laboratory. It has spurred a Darwinian contest to see who can dominate the conflict — and perhaps every conflict thereafter. Read this mind-blowing story by C.J. Chivers, a former Marine who documented the drone arms race.

Multiple scenes from Ukraine appear one by one. They depict a soldier firing a weapon, people holding candles at a funeral, medics treating a patient, a firefighter spraying water on a burning building and rescuers carrying a stretcher.

David Guttenfelder and Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

Don’t forget what this is actually about. The war may have reshaped global politics, but it’s being fought by real people. Civilians have suffered grievously. Spend some time with the work of my photojournalist colleagues who have recently covered the evacuees fleeing a Russian advance, severely wounded Ukrainian soldiers who returned to the fight and the human cost of Russia’s intensified attacks.

THE LATEST NEWS

D.C. Takeover

Two members of the National Guard walking in Washington, D.C. The Capitol is behind them.

At Union Station in Washington. Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

All 800 National Guard troops whom Trump ordered into the streets of Washington have mobilized for duty, the Pentagon said.
Federal authorities attempted to clear homeless encampments in the city’s northwest.
The chief and other leaders at the D.C. police department now need approval from the “emergency” commissioner to issue any directives, Bondi said.
City leaders say Trump is trying to solve a crime problem that he made worse.

Redistricting

Gavin Newsom stands at a podium, with both his hands held up. The sign on the podium reads: “Election Rigging Response Act.” An out-of-focus crowd stands behind him.

Gov. Gavin Newsom Mike Blake/Reuters

Newsom’s redistricting plan aims to help Democrats win more seats, to balance Trump’s push for more Republican seats in Texas and elsewhere. Other Democratic governors are pursuing different strategies.
The fight could help Newsom, who is contemplating a presidential run in 2028, position himself as a national leader taking on Trump.

OPINIONS

More than a century ago, America responded to a “boy problem” by creating groups like the Boy Scouts. That’s still the solution to loneliness and aggression, Robert Putnam and Richard Reeves write.

A definition of antisemitism that includes political speech does not protect Jews. It is the prelude to wider crackdowns against minorities, Lily Greenberg Call writes.

Here are columns by David Brooks on universities and Trump and Michelle Goldberg on a Polish World War II museum.

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