The meeting in the Oval Office between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a diplomatic car crash.“Your country is in big trouble. You're not winning,” Trump said, dressing down Zelenskyy in front of the world's media. “You don't have the cards.”
The blowup in February 2025, three years into the war, was more than just a heated public exchange: The Ukrainian delegation was asked to leave the White House, and Washington briefly suspended intelligence sharing with Kyiv. In the ensuing months, as Russia made slow but steady gains on the battlefield, Trump warmly welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska and seemed ready to push Ukraine into an unfavorable peace deal, including forcing it to give up territory.
But even as Zelenskyy sat next to Trump, his forces were preparing an operation that would reveal Ukraine's ability and ambition to take the war to Russia: Months later, drones smuggled into the country attacked Russian bombers, destroying or damaging planes worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Since then, Kyiv has ramped up a campaign of longer-range strikes inside Russia and in areas Moscow has seized, increased production of weapons, targeted Russian air defenses, and hit oil infrastructure and the warehouses of a major retailer in a bid to ensure ordinary Russians feel the impact of the conflict.
In an embarrassment to Putin, Ukrainian drone strikes sent thick plumes of smoke billowing over St. Petersburg shortly before the opening of an international economic forum in June. Concern over Ukraine's attacks led Russian authorities to scale down the May 9 military parade commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany. Strikes on oil refineries have caused a summer fuel crisis.
By the time Trump and Zelenskyy met at a NATO summit in July, the American president said the Ukrainian leader had “been very effective” in the war. “We've actually developed a good relationship,” Trump added.
But as Ukraine's strikes have intensified, so have Russia's — and Kyiv faces major challenges in defending against them because of shortages of American Patriot air defense missiles.
In the first six months of the year, 1,396 civilians were killed in Ukraine, according to the UN Meanwhile, the world body said Russian authorities reported 250 civilians killed in the same period. On Monday, a strike that Ukraine said hit an oil refinery in Russia killed 13 people, according to local officials.
And while Ukraine's effort appears to have shifted the narrative about the war in Washington, it's still not clear if it will be able to push Putin toward the negotiating table.
Ukraine's strikes are aimed at undermining the idea that Russia can afford to “just let this roll,” said Jack Watling, a senior research fellow at the London-based RUSI think tank.
The question of whether it will succeed depends on how much pain Ukraine can exact. “Logically, above a certain threshold, it does work but whether they can reach that threshold is an interesting question” — and one that depends at least partly on factors outside Kyiv's control, like continued European financial support, he noted.