U.S. President Donald Trump's August summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, is looming large as the White House presses its latest effort to secure a peace deal ending Moscow's full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine.

The president said he had exchanged “pretty strong words” with European leaders, while Russia signaled it saw itself as increasingly on the same page as the U.S.

European Union leaders will gather in Brussels Thursday for a summit that could expose deep fractures in the bloc. The Trump administration has pressured allied governments to abandon a plan using €210 billion in frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine.

A Ukrainian peace plan, sent this week to Washington, pushes back against President Trump’s proposal that Ukraine give up more land for peace, although Russia is unlikely to accept it.

European officials are growing concerned that an emerging US-brokered peace deal in Ukraine could be exploited by Russia, paving the way for a re-invasion of territory in the war-battered nation’s eastern Donbas region.

Donald Trump continues to put pressure on Ukraine to accept his administration’s peace proposal, despite how the plan favors Russia. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss what this may suggest about the administration’s shifting international priorities, and more.

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, right, Russian presidential foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, left, Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev, second right, and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, arrive for meetings in Moscow on Dec. 2, 2025. | Kristina Kormilitsyna, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP