1)Russia launches major drone and missile attack on Ukraine as peace efforts drag on

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Samya Kullab And Illia Novikov, August 21, 2025

Ukrainian servicemen of the 44th artillery brigade fire a 2s22 Bohdana self-propelled howitzer towards Russian positions at the frontline in the Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Danylo Antoniuk)

Russia launched 574 drones and 40 ballistic and cruise missiles overnight, in one of its biggest aerial attacks on Ukraine of the year, the Ukrainian Air Force said Thursday, while a recent diplomatic push to stop the three-year war is trying to gain momentum.

The attack mostly targeted western regions of the country, the air force said, where much of the military aid provided by Ukraine’s Western allies is believed to be delivered and stored. The strikes killed at least one person and injured 15 others, according to officials.

It was Russia’s third-largest aerial attack this year in terms of the number of drones fired and the eighth-largest in terms of missiles, according to official Ukrainian figures. Most such Russian attacks have hit civilian areas.

The strikes occurred during a renewed U.S.-led effort to reach a peace settlement following Russia’s February 2022 invasion of its neighbor. U.S. President Donald Trump discussed the war with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week, and at the start of this week hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House.

Russia has fired nearly 1,000 long-range drones and missiles at Ukraine since the White House talks.

Zelenskyy condemned the overnight attack, saying it was carried out “as if nothing were changing at all.”

Rubio to host Ukraine security talks with Europe

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will host a conference call Thursday with the national security advisers of European countries expected to play a role in future security guarantees for Ukraine, a senior U.S. official said.

One of Kyiv’s conditions for signing any peace deal is getting Western-backed military assurances to deter Russia from mounting another invasion in the coming years.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Wednesday that making security arrangements for Ukraine without Moscow’s involvement was pointless.

It was not immediately clear which countries would be represented on the call with Rubio. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity to outline a discussion that had not been publicly announced.

Zelenskyy calls for more pressure on Moscow

Ukraine and European leaders have accused Putin of stalling in ongoing peace efforts, including Ukraine’s proposal of a ceasefire and Zelenskyy’s offer to sit down with the Russian leader. The Kremlin has reacted coolly to those possibilities.

Lavrov, Moscow’s top diplomat, on Thursday repeated Russia’s policy that Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy — but only after key issues have previously been worked out by senior officials in what could be a long negotiating process.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said the strikes targeted “enterprises of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex.” It claimed the attack hit drone factories, storage depots and missile launch sites, as well as areas where Ukrainian troops were gathered. Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilian areas of Ukraine.

Moscow has shown no signs of pursuing meaningful negotiations to end the war, Zelenskyy said. He urged the international community to respond with stronger pressure on Moscow, including tougher sanctions and tariffs.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has kept up its attacks with domestically produced long-range drones on infrastructure inside Russia that supports Moscow’s war effort. Among other targets, it has hit oil refineries, and Russian wholesale gasoline prices have reached record highs in recent days.

Strike on U.S. electronics plant

Almost all the overnight missiles were fired from inside Russia. They reached deep into western Ukraine, near the border with Hungary.

Western parts of Ukraine are far from the battlefield’s front line in the east and south of the country, where a grinding war of attrition has killed tens of thousands of soldiers on both sides.

In the western city of Lviv, one person was killed and three were injured as the attack damaged 26 residential buildings, a kindergarten and administrative buildings, regional head Maksym Kozytskyi wrote on Telegram.

The Regional Prosecutor’s Office said three Russian cruise missiles with cluster munitions struck the city.

A U.S. electronics plant near the Hungarian border was also struck, according to Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine. The Flex factory is one of the biggest American investments in Ukraine, Hunder told The Associated Press by phone.

At the moment of impact, 600 nightshift workers were on the premises, and six of them were injured, Hunder said. Russian attacks on Ukraine since it launched its invasion have damaged property belonging to more than half of the chamber’s approximately 600 members, he added

“The message is clear: Russia is not looking for peace. Russia is attacking American business in Ukraine, humiliating American business,” Hunder said.

Ukraine awaits detail of security guarantees

In comments Wednesday that were embargoed until Thursday, Zelenskyy said Ukraine will hold intensive meetings to understand what kind of security guarantees its allies are willing to provide.

The details are being hammered out by national security advisers and military officials. The plans will become clearer by the end of next week, Zelenskyy said. He then expects to be ready to hold direct talks with Putin for the first time since the full-scale invasion.

The talks could also be conducted in a trilateral format alongside Trump, Zelenskyy said.

A venue for the meeting is being discussed, and Switzerland, Austria and Turkey are possibilities, Zelenskyy added.

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Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this story.

2)(Updated) No deal to end Russia’s war in Ukraine after Trump rolls out red carpet for Putin

Courtesy Barrie360.com and The Associated Press

By Michelle L. Price And Will Weissert, August 15, 2025

President Donald Trump failed to secure an agreement from Vladimir Putin on Friday to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, falling short in his most significant move yet to stop the bloodshed, even after rolling out the red carpet for the man who started it.

“There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” the U.S. president said, after Putin claimed they had hammered out an “understanding” on Ukraine and warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress.” Trump said he would call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders to brief them on the talks.

Trump, who for years has balked at American support for Ukraine and expressed admiration for Putin, had pledged confidently to bring about an end to the war on his first day back in the White House. Seven months later, after berating Zelenskyy in the Oval Office and stanching the flow of some U.S. military assistance to Kyiv, Trump could not bring Putin even to pause the fighting, as his forces make gains on the battlefield.

Trump had offered Putin both a carrot and a stick, issuing threats of punishing economic sanctions on Russia while also extending a warm welcome at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, but he appeared to walk away without any concrete result on ending the war in Ukraine, now in its fourth year.

Instead, he handed Putin long-sought recognition on the international stage, after years of Western efforts to make him a pariah over the war and his crackdown on dissent, and forestalled for Putin the threat of additional U.S. sanctions.

In a sign that the conversations did not yield Trump’s preferred result, the two leaders ended what was supposed to be a joint news conference without taking questions from reporters.

During a subsequent interview with Fox News Channel before leaving Alaska, Trump called it a “very warm meeting” but declined to give details about what he and Putin discussed. He said, “It’s not a done deal at all.”

“A lot of points were negotiated,” Trump said, but added, “As far as I’m concerned there’s no deal until there’s a deal. But we did make a lot of progress.”

Trump also insisted that the onus going forward might be somehow on Zelenskyy “to get it done” but said there would also be some involvement from European nations.

The U.S. president had wanted to show off his deal-making skills, while Putin wanted to negotiate a deal that would cement Russia’s gains, block Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance and eventually pull Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit.

“We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to,” Trump said during their joint appearance. “And there are just a very few that are left. Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

He continued: “We didn’t get there.”

Excluded from Trump and Putin’s discussions, Zelenskyy was left posting a video address before the meeting in which he expressed his hope for a “strong position from the U.S.”

Putin thanks Trump for his ‘friendly tone’

For Putin, just being on U.S. soil for the first time in more than a decade was validation after his ostracization following his invasion of Ukraine.

His meeting with Trump may stall the economic sanctions that the U.S. president had promised unless Moscow worked harder to bring fighting to a close. It may now simply lead to more meetings, giving his forces more time to make progress on the battlefield.

Putin thanked Trump for the “friendly” tone of their conversation and said Russia and the United States should “turn the page and go back to cooperation.”

He praised Trump as someone who “has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve and sincerely cares about the prosperity of his country, and at the same time shows understanding that Russia has its own national interests.”

“I expect that today’s agreements will become a reference point not only for solving the Ukrainian problem, but will also mark the beginning of the restoration of businesslike, pragmatic relations between Russia and the U.S.,” Putin said.

Despite not reaching any major breakthrough, Trump ended his remarks by thanking Putin and saying, “we’ll speak to you very soon and probably see you again very soon.”

When Putin smiled and offered, “next time in Moscow,” Trump said “that’s an interesting one” and said he might face criticism but “I could see it possibly happening.”

Trump and Putin had greeted each other with warm handshake, chatting almost like they were old friends., and gripped hands for an extended period of time on a red carpet rolled out at the military base. As they chatted, Putin grinned and pointed skyward, where B-2s and F-22s — military aircraft designed to oppose Russia during the Cold War — flew overhead. The two then shared the U.S. presidential limo known as “The Beast” for a short ride to their meeting site, with Putin offering a broad smile as the vehicle rolled past the cameras.

It was the kind of reception typically reserved for close U.S. allies and belied the bloodshed and suffering in the war Putin started in Ukraine. Although not altogether surprising considering their longtime friendly relationship, such outward friendliness before hours of closed-door meetings likely raised concerns from Zelenskyy and European leaders, who fear that Trump is primarily focusing on furthering U.S. interests and not pressing hard enough for Ukraine’s.

Not a one-on-one meeting

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said shortly before Air Force One touched down that the previously planned one-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin would be a three-on-three discussion including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff. Putin was joined by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov.

The change seemed to indicate that the White House was taking a more guarded approach than it did during a 2018 meeting in Helsinki, where Trump and Putin met privately with their interpreters and Trump then shocked the world by siding with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence officials on whether Russia meddled in the 2016 campaign.

Zelenskyy’s exclusion was also a heavy blow to the West’s policy of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine” and invites the possibility that Trump could agree to a deal that Ukraine does not want.

War still raging

Russia and Ukraine remain far apart in their demands for peace. Putin has long resisted any temporary ceasefire, linking it to a halt in Western arms supplies and a freeze on Ukraine’s mobilization efforts, which are conditions rejected by Kyiv and its Western allies.

The meeting comes as the war has caused heavy losses on both sides and drained resources. Ukraine has held on far longer than some initially expected since the February 2022 invasion, but it is straining to hold off Russia’s much larger army, grappling with bombardments of its cities and fighting for every inch on the over 600-mile (1,000-kilometer) front line.

Alaska is separated from Russia at its closest point by just 3 miles (less than 5 kilometers) and the international date line.

Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson was crucial to countering the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It continues to play a role today, as planes from the base still intercept Russian aircraft that regularly fly into U.S. airspace.

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Weissert reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Jonathan J. Cooper in Washington, Elise Morton in London and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.