President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in Ankara on Tuesday declaring that the war in Ukraine could be nearing its end, telling reporters alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he expects the fighting to be settled and that peace could come "hopefully soon."
The president said he had spoken by phone in recent days with both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that each man wants an agreement. "I think they both want to make a deal," Trump said. Asked whether anything had changed to make Putin more open to concessions, he answered, "Never changed." He added, "I just don't want them killing people."
Trump is scheduled to meet Zelenskyy on the sidelines of the two-day summit. More than 500 days into his second term, the president who once promised to end the war within 24 hours will sit across from a Ukrainian leader arriving with a colder arithmetic.
In the span of a single week, two Russian bombardments tore through Kyiv. The attack last Thursday killed 30 people, among the deadliest strikes on the capital since the war began. A second barrage early Monday killed at least 15 more in the city, with additional deaths in the surrounding region and dozens wounded. Ukraine said its air defenses stopped drones and cruise missiles but could not bring down the ballistic missiles, blaming an insufficient supply of interceptors.
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That shortage is Zelenskyy's central appeal in Ankara. He wants Patriot systems, the missiles that arm them, and the licenses to build more, and he has pressed allies to release what sits in their stockpiles. "It is critically important that the world, first and foremost the United States and our European partners, come out of the NATO Summit in Ankara with strong decisions in support of our air defense," he said. Several European governments have urged Washington to let Ukraine buy American Patriots.
The timing is unkind. The Patriot is among the few weapons proven to stop Russia's ballistic missiles, and the American inventory was drawn down during the recent U.S. war with Iran.
So Ukraine has been making a different case, written in fire. On Monday its drones struck the Omsk refinery in western Siberia, Russia's largest, roughly 1,500 miles from Ukrainian territory and close to the border with Kazakhstan. Local Russian officials confirmed the blaze. It was among the deepest strikes Kyiv has carried out since the invasion, and, by Ukraine's account, the last of Russia's 11 biggest gasoline producers to be hit. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy called it a blow to Russia's oil economy.
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The refinery was not alone. Ukraine reported strikes the same day on Baltic oil ports and other refineries, part of a summer campaign that has left drivers waiting in gas lines across a country that ranks among the world's largest oil producers.
The pressure reached the water as well. On Tuesday, the commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert Brovdi, known by the callsign "Madyar," said drones had struck eight tankers from Russia's so-called shadow fleet in the Sea of Azov, along with a cargo ship and a ferry. The vessels, he said, were "badly damaged and on fire." The tankers, aging and sailing under hidden ownership, carry fuel to Crimea, the peninsula Russia annexed in 2014. The claim could not be independently verified, and Moscow did not comment. In occupied Crimea, where a blackout followed the strikes, rationing at the pump has been in place since late spring.
