Momentum shifts: Zelensky visits Washington amid improving US sentiment toward Ukraine

UKRAINE - In Brief 28 Jul 2026 by Dmytro Boyarchuk

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Today’s meeting between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump in Washington was different from what we have grown accustomed to. For the first time under this administration, Ukraine’s president arrived in the American capital against a genuinely favorable news backdrop and amid moderately positive expectations about what the encounter might produce. That alone marked a shift worth pausing on. Trump had reportedly been struck by the steady stream of footage coming out of Russia this summer: refineries in flames, oil terminals burning near Moscow and St. Petersburg, and tankers ablaze in the Sea of Azov. According to reports based on internal briefings, the president had been walked through the scale of Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign and came away visibly impressed by what Kyiv’s defense industry had managed to build. Whatever one makes of Trump’s shifting moods, the imagery appears to have done real persuasive work. Despite Putin’s triumphant rhetoric, a growing chorus in Western monitoring circles has pointed out that Russia’s vaunted offensive is grinding to a near-halt. According to estimates by the Institute for the Study of War, Russian forces advanced into or infiltrated roughly 623 square kilometers in the first half of 2026, compared with nearly 2,190 square kilometers over the same period in 2025. That represents a collapse to less than a third of last year’s pace—and that is before accounting for the territory Ukraine has retaken around Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia. Once Ukrainian recoveries are offset against Russian gains, the net change on the map is close to zero. That matters because “we are still taking territory, however slowly” has been one of t...