Nearly three years after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, his troops are making steady progress on the battlefield.

That will take some doing. Putin remains uninterested in peace talks as long as Russian troops continue to gain ground in Ukraine’s east, albeit at a slow pace, and while Ukrainian forces hold seized territory in the Kursk region inside Russia, according to John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and other former officials.

Ukrainian president says discussions between Putin and Trump will look like a ‘dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine’