Is there good news on the battlefield for Ukraine?
According to an Associated Press story on Thursday, which cited Ukraine’s military commander, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukrainian forces have “halted Russia’s recent advance into the northern Sumy region and have stabilized the front line near the border with Russia.”
In doing so, Ukraine says, they have blocked Russia from deploying as many as 50,000 troops to other areas of the front line.
“Based on the results of May and June, we can say that this year’s wave of the enemy’s summer offensive from Russian territory is faltering,” Col. Gen. Syrskyi said, per the Kyiv Independent. “In certain areas, our units are liberating Ukrainian territory.”
War Update: The Ukraine Conflict Continues as NATO Looks Elsewhere
The eyes of the world, and especially the United States and NATO, remain focused elsewhere, even as the war in Ukraine continues.
Earlier this week, while Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the NATO summit in the Netherlands, 21 people were killed in Russian missile and drone strikes, according to The Moscow Times.
One of them was a drone attack on the Sumy region, while 19 people were killed in a missile strike in the eastern city of Dnipro. One Monday, five people were killed in Kyiv.
The New York Times reported that Russia and Ukraine “fell down the agenda” at the NATO summit this week.
“Keeping President Trump happy,” it appears, was at the top of the agenda for the summit, with the NATO nations agreeing to increase military spending, a longtime Trump goal and the source of much of his grumbling about the NATO alliance since before his first election as president.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, “was not feted as in years past,” while the idea of Ukraine joining NATO was not mentioned in the summit’s official declaration. And while Zelenskyy and Trump met, there were no promises about continuing peace talks.
The Ukrainian president even wore a suit jacket to the summit, something that he is not known for doing. And his meeting with Trump was not nearly as contentious as the one they had at the White House back in February.
“Ukraine? What’s Ukraine?,” Michael John Williams, a former adviser to NATO, told the Times about the summit. “The Europeans were saying how committed they are to Ukraine, especially the British, which is no surprise. But there was also really an attempt to keep controversial issues off the table. Ukraine wasn’t the front and center discussion it has been.”
The Kyiv Independent had a similar report about the NATO summit, writing that “Trump gets king’s treatment at NATO summit while Ukraine sits on the sidelines.”
“NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte set out to demonstrate that transatlantic unity remains strong — even if that meant appeasing Trump with flattery and deprioritizing potentially divisive topics like Ukraine,” The Independent report said.
Meanwhile, Trump, after the meeting, was more complimentary of NATO and critical of Vladimir Putin than he typically has been.
“I think it’s a great time to end it (war). I’m going to speak to Vladimir Putin, see if we can get it ended,” Trump said, per the Independent. “He (Zelensky) is fighting a brave battle, it’s a tough battle.”
Ukraine Pulls Nobel Push
In late 2024, Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of Ukraine’s foreign affairs committee, announced that he would nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. The nomination process is open to most officials in governments and international organizations, and all it really requires is a letter to the Nobel organization.
However, this week, Merezhko said he was withdrawing the nomination.
“This appeasement of aggression encourages Putin to continue the attack. Trump just turns a blind eye to all of it,” he wrote in a letter to the committee. “I lost any kind of faith that Trump will deliver in any of his promises.”
About the Author:
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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