The questions of whether Ukraine is willing to cede the Crimean Peninsula to Russia and agree to never join NATO are at the center of Monday’s high-stakes meeting between Mr. Trump, Mr. Zelenskyy and other European leaders at the White House for a follow-up to Mr. Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Mr. Trump is attempting to sweeten the talks with Mr. Zelenskyy by offering security guarantees similar to NATO’s Article 5 protection, an offer the Russian leader agreed to concede to the Ukrainians at Friday’s summit in Alaska. Mr. Zelenskyy has already welcomed news of the guarantees, but there are sticking points on territorial issues. The Ukrainian president has ruled out ceding certain territory seized by Russian forces in the more than three-year-old invasion. Mr. Putin is expected to demand large swaths of the Donetsk region, as well as other territory in eastern Ukraine.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are joining Mr. Zelenskyy at the White House to present a unified European front. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged Sunday that an end-of-war deal may still be “a long ways off.”

The Army is working to create systems to thwart next-generation threats that can circumvent traditional defense as U.S. rivals dedicate enormous resources to developing them, according to Lt. Gen. Sean A. Gainey, who leads the Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense.

Gen. Gainey sat down with Threat Status for an exclusive “Influencers” video interview at the recent Space & Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama. He emphasized successful demonstrations of U.S. missile defense superiority in Israel and Ukraine, with Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems neutralizing various targets.

At the same time, the general acknowledged that the speed of technological development makes adequate missile defense a challenge. “The rapid evolution of drone warfare is making it a complicated environment to defend against these several different types of threats,” he said, adding that adversaries are “applying ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones simultaneously and timing them to be able to overwhelm the operator and confuse the operator.”

“That’s the most significant change we’re seeing on the battlefield,” Gen. Gainey said.

Lee Ae-ran lived for years in exile and impoverishment in North Korea before eventually escaping to South Korea, where today she runs a restaurant on a quiet hillside perched just minutes from Seoul’s downtown. In May, she published her memoir, “One Meal, One Memory: The Taste of Survival in North Korean Cuisine.”

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the North Korean regime began investigating people whose documents had been lost amid the 1950-1953 Korean War. They discovered that Ms. Lee’s paternal grandparents had escaped to the South. That thrust the Lees out of the comfortable “loyal” class and into the despised “hostile” class.

Washington Times Asia Editor Andrew Salmon recently sat down with Ms. Lee for an interview. What followed was a deep dive into the history of the deadly famines of the 1990s, euphemistically known in today’s North Korea as “The Arduous March.”

Afghanistan is cut off from the world, and the “progress of two decades — in governance, education, women’s rights and civil society — has been rolled back in a matter of months,” writes Shahmahmood Miakhel, a former governor of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, who says the collapse “was not inevitable.” 

“In February 2020, President Trump brokered the Doha Agreement with the Taliban, an ambitious framework to end America’s longest war,” Mr. Miakhel writes. “The deal contained two main pillars: the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the launch of intra-Afghan dialogue to create an inclusive government that respected human rights, women’s rights and democratic choice. The first was carried out. The second was not.”

“Mr. Trump has the credibility to … bring all Afghan stakeholders back to the table,” Mr. Miakhel writes. “This would not mean military intervention. It would mean political engagement: Convene exiled Afghan leaders, civil society activists and the Taliban for renewed talks; involve regional powers (including Qatar, Turkey and Gulf States ) to guarantee implementation; and set clear benchmarks for rights protections, electoral processes and international reintegration.”

A “coordinated effort” has emerged across Palestinian, Arab and international media platforms “seeking to pressure Israel diplomatically by distorting the genuine hardship faced by the Palestinian population of Gaza,” writes Maj. Avi Tal, a graduate of the Israel Defense Forces’ elite intelligence Unit 8200.

“Yet the difficulties in Gaza stem largely from failures on the part of Hamas and international aid organizations in the distribution of food and aid supplies,” Maj. Tal argues in an op-ed for The Times.

“The primary goal of this campaign is to establish the narrative that Israel is deliberately starving civilians,” he writes. “Still, a closer examination reveals that it may be less about the genuine availability of food and more about achieving strategic objectives that ultimately serve Hamas’ interests.”

• 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