Russia makes a swift battlefield advance, seeking an edge in Trump talks

Mourners attend the funeral of Vasyl Churhovych, a Ukrainian soldier who was killed near Pokrovsk a week earlier, in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, May 20, 2025. Russian forces are striving to shape the battlefield to their advantage before a high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin, making a swift advance in eastern Ukraine after months of grinding battle. (Brendan Hoffman/The New York Times)

By Constant Méheut

Russian forces are striving to shape the battlefield to their advantage before a high-stakes summit between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, making a swift advance in eastern Ukraine after months of grinding battle.

In recent days, Russia’s troops broke through a segment of Ukraine’s defensive line near the city of Pokrovsk, a longtime stronghold. They have advanced several miles into Ukrainian-held territory, threatening to outflank Ukraine’s positions.

“The situation is quite chaotic, as the enemy, having found gaps in the defense, is infiltrating deep inside, trying to quickly establish a foothold and accumulate forces for further advancement,” said DeepState, a Ukrainian group with ties to the military that maps the battlefield.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine said in his evening address Monday that the Russians “are redeploying their troops and forces in ways that suggest preparations for new offensive operations” and that they are “not preparing for a ceasefire or an end to the war.”

Ukraine, too, is seeking an edge before the Russian-American peace talks Friday in Alaska. Ukraine has ramped up attacks on Russian oil refineries, doubling down on its strategy of pressuring Russia into making concessions during negotiations by targeting the Kremlin’s main revenue source to fund the war.

Pressing their advantage as peace talks gather pace has been a recurring tactic of both sides throughout the current war and the one that preceded it starting in 2014. Ukraine’s bold June drone attacks deep inside Russia, which destroyed many strategic bombers, came just a day before negotiations in Istanbul. In 2015, Russia intensified fighting during ceasefire talks, surrounding the eastern town of Debaltseve, to force political concessions from Ukraine.

Russia’s recent push near Pokrovsk, in the Donetsk region, sends a stark warning that Moscow’s forces remain capable of making rapid gains on the battlefield. It comes as Putin is expected to present Trump with major demands during Friday’s talks, which could include an insistence that Ukraine cede the part of the Donetsk region that Ukraine still holds.

Pokrovsk, which was once a critical logistical hub for Ukrainian forces in the east, is now semiencircled from the northeast to the southwest. Ukrainian troops must pass through a narrow 10-mile corridor to enter the city, leaving them vulnerable to drone attacks.

Russian forces are likely to try to tighten their noose around the city to force Ukrainian troops to withdraw, a tactic they have successfully used to capture other cities.

Pasi Paroinen, an analyst for the Finland-based Black Bird Group, which tracks battlefield movements, said Russian forces had quickly infiltrated Ukrainian lines at a depth of roughly 10 miles in the past three days, a contrast to Russia’s usual slow grind.

The “next 24-48 hours will likely be crucial” in whether the Ukrainian army can contain the push, Paroinen wrote on the social platform X.

Even as both sides keep fighting, they have tried to show Trump, who has long condemned the war as a costly waste of lives and resources, that they remain committed to pursuing peace.

After Russia increased drone attacks on Ukrainian cities during talks last month between Moscow and Washington, Trump’s typically lenient tone toward Putin soured noticeably. “He talks nice and then he bombs everybody in the evening,” Trump said of Putin. “So there’s a little bit of a problem there. I don’t like it.”

Since the beginning of August, however, Russia has significantly scaled back its drone attacks in what analysts have called an apparent attempt to curry favor with Trump. While Russia launched an average of 201 drones per night in July — a record in the war — the figure has dropped to 78 drones per night this month, according to a New York Times analysis of data released by the Ukrainian air force.

“The Russians know very well how to read Trump’s mind,” Oleksandr Kraiev, the director of the North America program at the Kyiv research group Ukrainian Prism, said in a phone interview. “It’s not a coincidence that drone attacks have decreased.”

But with Trump’s history of deference to Putin, Ukraine is concerned that the Russian leader may succeed in winning Trump over to his perspective on the war by securing a one-on-one meeting that could sideline Zelenskyy.

The Kremlin has long said an end to the fighting would need to address what it calls the “root causes” of the war — shorthand for a range of issues, including the existence of Ukraine as a fully independent and sovereign nation aligned with the West.

To prevent that outcome, Ukraine has rallied its European allies to pressure the Trump administration against letting Russia dictate the terms of the peace talks. A statement released Tuesday by all European Union member states except Hungary said that “the path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without Ukraine.”

On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said that a trilateral meeting with Trump and Putin would take place in the future, but that no date had been set. The Trump administration has said it is working to set up such a meeting.

Several European leaders, together with Zelenskyy, will join an online meeting with Trump on Wednesday. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the discussions would focus on “options to exert pressure on Russia,” on preparations for potential peace negotiations and on issues of territorial claims and security.

Kyiv and European capitals are especially worried that Trump could agree to Russia’s demand that Ukraine cede sizable portions of land it still controls. Trump has insisted in recent days that a peace deal would involve “some land swapping” — to which Zelenskyy responded, “Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier.”

Ukraine and its European allies insist that any meaningful peace talks begin only after a ceasefire and that the current front line should be the starting point of negotiations. But with Russia’s swift gains in the east in recent days, this line may have shifted by Friday.