Vladimir Putin Heads to Trump Summit to Friday’s planned confident that Russia is in a dominant position on the battlefield as his military advances in Ukraine.

That’s likely to strengthen his determination to secure major territorial concessions when the Russian and US presidents meet in Alaska in return for a ceasefire that Putin has so far been reluctant to concede to Trump.

Russian forces broke through Ukrainian defenses in the eastern Donetsk region around villages leading to the town of Dobropillya, according to the Deep State monitoring platform, which maintains cooperation with Ukraine’s Defense Ministry. They’re consolidating positions and probing for weak points in defenses to try to reach the road linking the town and the strategic city of Kramatorsk, it said Monday in a post on Telegram.

Putin and Trump are set to meet as Russia’s army grinds out gains in a summer campaign that’s putting Ukrainian defenses under mounting pressure, so far without achieving a decisive advance. The Russian president has repeatedly rejected calls from Trump, Ukraine and European leaders to agree to a ceasefire to allow for negotiations on a peace deal to end the full-scale invasion that’s now in its fourth year.

“Putin has much stronger cards to play than his opponents,” said Marina Miron, a military researcher at the Defence Studies Department at King’s College London. “The Russian army is on the offensive, and they are dictating the rules.”

Only a few lightly armed Russians bypassed defenses around Dobropillya, and Ukraine is working to restore control, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told reporters on Tuesday. Moscow wants to create the impression that “Russia’s advancing and Ukraine’s losing” ahead of the Alaska summit, he said.

Still, Ukrainian forces face a difficult situation in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, though they’ve had successes in pushing back Russian troops in Luhansk and in the northern Sumy region, Zelenskiy said. Russia may be relocating as many as 30,000 experienced combat troops from Sumy toward the frontlines in the Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions in preparation for an offensive by the end of this month, he said.

Trump has expressed disappointment at Putin’s intransigence following six phone calls this year. He threatened to impose secondary tariffs on countries buying Russian oil unless the Kremlin agreed to a truce by last Friday. But after talks in Moscow last week between Putin and US envoy Steve Witkoff, the two sides announced their first summit meeting since Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Zelenskiy and European allies plan a call with Trump on Wednesday, amid fears the US leader may concede too much to Putin in return for a deal to halt the fighting.

While Trump’s pushing for Russia to end the war, Putin wants Kyiv to withdraw its forces fully from the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine before he’ll agree to any truce. That would hand his army a victory in Ukraine’s so-called Donbas area that it’s been unable to achieve on the battlefield since Russia first incited fighting there in 2014.

US and Russian officials have also been discussing a deal that would halt the war along current battle lines, leaving Russia in control of the parts of Ukraine’s Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions that it currently occupies, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine won’t cede any of its territory to Russia. Territorial issues can’t be separated from security guarantees for his country because “for Russians, Donbas is a bridgehead for a future new offensive,” he said.

Trump told reporters on Monday that there may be “some changes” in land as part of an agreement. “We’re going to change the lines, the battle lines,” he said.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte also said at the weekend that territory would “have to be on the table” along with security guarantees for Ukraine. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas pushed back on Monday, saying “we should not even discuss any concessions” with Putin until Russia agrees to a full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine.

Putin Heads to Trump Summit

Conceding Putin’s demand for territory could deliver some of the most fortified Ukrainian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk to Russia while allowing him to avoid potentially massive troop losses from months of attritional warfare.

Deepening manpower shortages are adding to stresses on Ukraine’s defensive lines.

“Ukraine does not have enough soldiers and infantry, and that’s clearly the most significant challenge,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow at the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, who has recently visited Ukraine’s frontlines. “The question here is really about sustainability” if the war were to extend into 2026 and beyond, he said.

While the front line isn’t in danger of collapse, Russian pressure is mounting and Moscow’s use of its own offensive “line of drones” known as Rubicon has narrowed Ukraine’s advantage in this field, Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in a July 31 assessment on social media following a visit to the front.

“Russian forces continue to adapt, and Ukraine must find ways to stay ahead,” he said.

Russia may be focusing on its advance toward Dobropillya “to set informational conditions” ahead of the summit with Trump, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War. Putin is attempting to frame the seizure of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions “as inevitable to push Ukraine and the West to capitulate to Kremlin demands,” it said in an Aug. 11 assessment.

Even a failure to reach an agreement in Alaska may serve Putin’s interest if it buys him time to continue his offensive while persuading Trump to delay the threatened US secondary tariffs as talks continue on a potential settlement.

Russian forces have captured some 2,400 square kilometers in Ukraine so far this year, about 0.4% of the country’s territory, according to Bloomberg estimates based on Deep State mapping data.

“Five key factors we assess are critical to determining the outcome of the Russia-Ukraine war, such as financial power, manpower, firepower, morale and territorial control, indicate that Russia’s advantage continues to grow,” said Alex Kokcharov, Bloomberg Geoeconomics analyst. “Moscow probably believes that it has a significant advantage over Ukraine, and that time is on its side.”

With assistance from Daryna Krasnolutska.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.