Today Trump Meets Zelensky, Who Now Seems To ‘Have the Cards’ as Ukraine’s Military Prospects Brighten

Jockeying for President Trump’s favor ahead of his meeting today with President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russia fired ballistic missiles into Kyiv and Ukraine bombed Russia’s largest refinery. The leaders of Russia and Ukraine seek to impress the American leader who shows a new interest in brokering a peace deal. On Saturday, Mr. Trump took a break from Fourth of July celebrations to take long telephone calls from each of the warring leaders.Today at Ankara, Mr. Trump is to meet with the Ukrainian leader on the margins of the North Atlantic Treaty summit. Making the Russians nervous, Mr. Trump and Vice President Vance have been making complimentary comments about Ukraine’s military advances.Mr. Zelensky is “doing pretty well. Look, no matter how you look at it, he’s doing pretty well,” Mr. Trump said at a recent press conference with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte. “Look, you have to say he’s courageous. He’s got great equipment, but he’s got great men. He’s got fighters.”Mr. Trump’s comments mark a shift from his criticism in February 2025 of Mr. Zelensky during an Oval Office meeting with top administration officials. “You’re not in a good position,” Mr. Trump then told the Ukrainian leader. “You don’t have the cards right now.”President Trump and President Zelensky at the Oval Office on February 28, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty ImagesMr. Vance, who has long opposed giving American military aid to Ukraine, said last week: “The situation on the battlefield in Ukraine is such that the Russians, with their offensive, can hardly gain anything, while the Ukrainians, with their successes, are creating the conditions necessary for ending the war.” Mr. Putin’s strategy to impress the American president is to fire dozens of ballistic missiles into Kyiv, the political and press capital of Ukraine. In two attacks on Kyiv over the last week, Russian missiles killed 61 people and wounded about 250. A third missile barrage, that ended this morning, hit warehouses and commercial buildings, leaving few injuries.In contrast, Ukraine is flexing its new drone muscles. In Monday’s attack, drones flew to Omsk, 1,500 miles east of Ukraine. Unlike lightweight drones used earlier in the war, these long-range drones are as big as school buses and equipped with highly accurate navigational systems. Hitting the “brains” of the refinery, seven drones caused fires that shut down a facility that normally produces the equivalent of 15 percent of all gasoline consumed in Russia.Cars line up at a Lukoil gas station at Moscow on June 30, 2026. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP“Siberia, too, is now within reach of Ukrainian precision strikes,” Mr. Zelensky told Ukrainians in his nightly address Monday. Yesterday, in his speech to NATO delegates, he picked up the theme, arguing that Russia has lost its strategic depth.“For a long time, Russia believed it had a territorial advantage no one else possessed — a deep rear where it could safely keep military production, military equipment, and everything its war depends on, believing no one could reach them,” said Mr. Zelensky, visibly buoyed by a standing ovation he had received on entering the hall. “Just yesterday, Ukrainian drones broke through Russia’s defenses and struck a Russian oil refinery in Siberia.” He added that “this is not an exception. It is the new reality. There is no major oil refinery left in Russia that has not been struck by Ukraine.” The Financial Times reported Sunday that during the first half of this year, Ukraine hit Russian refineries 194 times, an 11-fold increase from the same period last year.The raid into Siberia highlighted how Russian air defenses have not made much progress in the nearly 40 years since a 19-year-old West German amateur pilot, Mathias Rust, flew his Cessna into the Soviet Union and landed near Red Square. In that 1987 incursion, Mr. Rust flew about 140 miles an hour for four hours at low altitudes across Western Russia.A single engine Cessna aircraft, piloted by Mathias Rust, at Moscow’s Red Square near St. Basil’s Church on May 28, 1987. APIn Monday’s attack, Ukrainian Fire Point FP-1 drones flew about 100 miles an hour for about 15 hours. They flew at low altitudes, crossing the Ural Mountains into southwestern Siberia. Videos show the drones approaching the refinery amid the crackle of automatic weapons from the ground. In an echo of the earlier, Soviet air defense failure, a Russian Su-57, a fifth-generation fighter, flew over Omsk, but was unable to prevent the attack by $50,000 drones.Far from a one-off, the Omsk raid was paired Monday with drone attacks on two other Russian refineries and on two oil-exporting ports near St. Petersburg. Loss of about 25 percent of Russia’s total refining capacity has resulted in rationing, closed gas stations, and long gas lines in all of Russia’s 83 regions.On Monday in the Vologda region, the governor appealed to residents on Telegram asking them not to hoard gasoline and “not to panic.” In his next post, he said he ran out of gas and had to hitchhike home.With some gas line waits stretching into days, Russia’s internet fills with videos of drivers milling around in angry protests, threatening each other with pistols or kicks.On state TV, talk show host Vladimir Solovyov worried this week that gasoline shortages could provoke popular uprisings. To head this off, he asked for ‘harsher measures’ against citizens and military bloggers who complain about the gasoline drought. A Russian military landing ship sails near Kerch, Crimea, on July 17, 2023. APIn the short term, the cracking may come first in Crimea. As a result of daily drone attacks on power plants, nighttime satellite photos show the Russia-occupied peninsula looking like Cuba or North Korea at night — a weakly illuminated capital in a sea of black.Determined to blockade Crimea, Ukraine said that on Monday and Tuesday its drones hit a total of 10 ships that supply the peninsula through the Sea of Azov. Plying what is classified as the world’s shallowest sea, these small, 7,000 deadweight tonnage tankers would be called “lakers” in North America. Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Brigade posted black and white drone footage showing vessels being attacked and erupting into flames.“Ukraine is effectively seizing control not only of the northern Black Sea, but of the entire Sea of Azov as well,” Ukrainian war blogger Illia Ponomarenko posted on X.Alarmed by the reach and accuracy of Ukraine’s drones, Mr. Putin apparently ordered the relocation of his favorite yacht, Graceful, to Murmansk, Russia’s ice-free port in the Arctic from his native St. Petersburg. A photo taken last week off the coast of Norway, shows the luxury yacht sailing north, draped in anti-drone nets and escorted by a Russian Navy anti-submarine ship and a Russian rescue vessel.Putting Mr. Putin on the back foot is key to forcing the Kremlin to accept real peace talks, Ukraine’s presidential chief of staff, Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov, told RBC-Ukraine news in an interview posted yesterday, the day Mr. Trump arrived in Turkey for the NATO Summit.“It’s very simple. Everyone in the world likes winners,” said General Budanov. “Trump definitely likes winners. So we have to achieve victories.”

Today Trump Meets Zelensky, Who Now Seems To ‘Have the Cards’ as Ukraine’s Military Prospects Brighten

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