"It Takes Two to Tango"

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, from left, President Donald Trump and Russian President Donald Trump. (Photos by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / GETTY-AFP)

Good day, from Kyiv.

I will have been here a full month by the end of this week. Everyone is watching the news, and everyone is reading about the words coming out of the Oval Office on a daily basis.

Yet at this hour, optimism is low that Russia will meet President Donald Trump’s deadline of one to two weeks from now to sit down with the Ukrainians in a high-level diplomatic format. Trump has said he wants Presidents Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Vladimir Putin to sit down face-to-face before a trilateral meeting involving the United States.“One to two weeks?” one storeowner said to me. “I believe this war will go on for one to two more years.”

On the ground in Ukraine, people are preparing for that possibility. The summer days are beginning to fade, meaning another wartime winter is swiftly approaching. And as the calendar prepares to flip from August to September, Trump has made clear the ball is firmly in Russia’s court. Asked by a reporter Monday if Russia would face consequences, Trump responded, “Yeah, there could be very big consequences, but we’ll see what happens. There might be very consequences because this is something that has to end.”Over the weekend, Vice President JD Vance reaffirmed that the threat of economic sanctions was still on the table.

Today, Bloomberg reported India is preparing to scale back the amount of Russian oil it purchases after the White House slapped additional tariffs on the country earlier this month to discourage purchases from the Russian market.

Frontlines with Robert Sherman: Will Putin and Zelenskyy meet? >“We respect President Trump because President Trump defends American national interests,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And I have reason to believe that President Trump respects President Putin because he defends Russian national interests. And whatever they discuss between themselves is not a secret. We want peace in Ukraine.”

Still, strikes continue to be carried out, and there are no indications of any tensions easing.Trump did confirm to NewsNation’s Kellie Meyer that he has spoken with Putin since their meeting in Alaska.

“Every conversation I have with him is a good conversation, and then unfortunately a bomb is loaded up into Kyiv or some place and I get very angry about it,” he told Meyer in the Oval Office on Monday. “I think we are going to get the war done. It’s tough.”

Watch: American jets scrambled as Russian aircraft nears Alaska >Meanwhile, in Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command was put on notice when a Russian aircraft came close to Alaskan airspace. NORAD said it tracked an IL-20 Coot — a Russian aircraft used for surveillance — into what’s called the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone. Two F-16 fighter jets, two KC-135 tankers and an E-3 Sentry aircraft were dispatched to monitor the Russian aircraft. This is the third time this has happened in the last week, though the Russian aircraft was not perceived as an “immediate threat.” 

Zelenskyy has said there would be more meetings with the U.S. this week regarding possible future meetings with Russia.But, as Trump said this week, it takes “two to tango.” Both Russia and Ukraine have to want to make a deal in order for one to be struck.

On the ground in Ukraine, we’re all playing a game of “wait and see.”