From the Institute for the Study of War:
"Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 15, 2025
...Putin said nothing in the joint press conference to indicate that he has moderated either his war aims or his willingness to compromise on them and reiterated language he has used since 2021 to justify Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Putin again demonstrated that he has not changed his views on Ukrainian sovereignty since 2021 and remains disinterested in serious peace negotiations with Ukraine. Putin used the joint press conference following the August 15 Alaska summit to evoke the Kremlin’s long-standing narrative that Russia and Ukraine share the “same roots” and that Russia considers Ukraine to be a “brotherly” nation.[8] Putin published an essay on the “Historic Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” in July 2021, in which he similarly ideologized that Ukrainians and Belarusians have always belonged to the Russian nation because of their shared “historical and spiritual space.”[9] ISW previously assessed that the essay, which Putin published less than a month after meeting with then-US President Joe Biden in Geneva in June 2021, was an ultimatum to Kyiv as it openly questioned Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Putin stated in the essay that Ukraine was a ”product of the Soviet era shaped on the lands of historical Russia,” and reiterated these arguments in his February 2022 declaration of war against Ukraine as a justification for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.[10] The continuity between Putin’s statements at the August 15 press conference with Trump and his previous statements demonstrates that he remains committed to the view that Ukraine’s existence as a state and territorial integrity depend on Ukraine’s alignment with Russia..."
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