Russia’s battlefield breakthrough in Ukraine this week and the Kremlin’s relentless sabotage campaign across the rest of Europe have ratcheted up the stakes around the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska.

There is unease among Ukrainians amid reports that Russian forces have pierced Ukrainian lines in Donbas and a warning from Norway that Russian hackers temporarily seized control and sabotaged operations of a hydroelectric dam.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his allies among European leaders have expressed cautious optimism that Mr. Trump has heeded repeated warnings that Mr. Putin cannot be trusted. They collectively praised Mr. Trump on Thursday for his support for an international force they are mustering to enforce the terms of any eventual peace agreement.

Some Ukrainians are resigned to the prospect that territory may be lost in such an agreement. “I want them to agree to some kind of truce. We have been fighting for a long time,” a resident identified only as Volodymyr told the Kyiv Post.

China’s communist government engaged in “genocide and crimes against humanity” involving minority and religious groups, according to the State Department’s annual report on human rights.

The genocide involved Muslim Uyghurs in western China and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang, the westernmost province. Despite critics who say the latest report may have watered down human rights abuses in nations friendly to the United States, the report continued its harsh assessment of Beijing’s abuses.

Conservatives in South Korea — out of power and, in the high-profile cases of former President Yoon Suk Yeol and his wife, facing serious legal jeopardy — found little to cheer in the list of pending pardons released by the country’s left-leaning president this week.

Two names in particular on President Lee Jae-myung’s list of pardons — a presidential tradition on the country’s annual Liberation Day holiday, which is celebrated today — have irked the liberal president’s political opponents on the right. Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon examines the developments in a dispatch from South Korea, a top U.S. ally in close proximity to North Korea and China.

Most notably, Mr. Lee has announced plans to pardon 2,188 business people, activists and politicians, including Cho Kuk, a short-lived justice minister and a political nemesis of the jailed Mr. Yoon, and Yoon Mee-hyang, an advocate for “comfort women” — an issue that has long generated friction between South Korea and Japan, the other top U.S. security ally in the region.

Matthew H. Murray writes that Mr. Trump’s stance in the summit with Mr. Putin is a “deliberate shift away from negotiation,” with the White House press team having framed the meeting “as a strategic listening exercise: an opportunity for the president to gauge Mr. Putin’s willingness to talk about peace.”

“Mr. Trump should start the meeting with Mr. Putin by declaring that he will not discuss ‘root causes’ of the war,” writes Mr. Murray, an adjunct professor at Columbia University and deputy assistant secretary of commerce for Europe, the Middle East and Africa in the Obama administration. “Mr. Putin’s depiction of root causes is based on a fabricated historical narrative that Ukraine belongs to Russia and that American and European efforts to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty pose an existential threat.

“Mr. Trump’s purpose in meeting Mr. Putin is to discuss the future, not the past,” he writes, adding that Mr. Trump “seeks to chart a diplomatic course toward a ceasefire, an end to the war and sustainable peace.”

Mr. Trump has “made history” by ordering the Pentagon to treat certain Latin American drug cartels, including Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles, as “foreign terrorist organizations and to engage them with U.S. military force,” writes Ignacio De Leon.

“With this order, Title 10 authorities (the legal powers for the U.S. armed forces to conduct combat operations) and Title 50 authorities (the intelligence community’s legal powers for covert and clandestine actions) are now in play,” writes Mr. De Leon, director of the Venezuelan American Patriots Foundation. “This rare combination gives Washington maximum flexibility to act. Translation: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s narco-military syndicate is now in the same crosshairs as the Islamic State group and al Qaeda.”

• Aug. 15 — Deterrence Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific: An Australian Perspective with Christine Leah, National Institute for Deterrence Studies

• Aug. 19 — Counterterrorism and U.S. Strategy with Sebastian Gorka, Hudson Institute

• Aug. 20 — The Future of U.S.-Australia Critical Minerals Cooperation, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 20 — Using AI to Understand Disaster Risks: New Tools, Shifting Frontiers, Chronic Challenges, Stimson Center

• Aug. 21 — Replicator and Beyond: The Future of Drone Warfare, Brookings Institution

• Aug. 26 — The Future of Naval Aviation: A Conversation with Vice Adm. Daniel L. Cheever and Lt. Gen. Bradford J. Gering, Center for Strategic & International Studies

• Aug. 26 — Reexamining the U.S.-South Africa Relationship, Foundation for Defense of Democracies