It's Monday, August 18, 2025. I'm Albert Moller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

Well, the two presidents met. U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin met last Friday in Alaska at Joint Base Elmendor.

Very interesting place to meet. Very interesting meeting. It only lasted about three hours

in what were described as productive conversations between the U.S. president and the Russian

president. The big issue is, of course, Ukraine. And the background to that is the brutal attack on Ukraine

and now the war against Ukraine that has been undertaken by Russia after its invasion on February

the 24th of 2022. Now, remember, you really have to talk about Russia's aggression towards Ukraine

going back to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2016.

And so we're talking about years, but in between those two particular invasions,

what was called the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine,

there were years in which, I guess we can now say, Vladimir Putin was simply biting his time,

waiting for

the opportunity. He sees the opportunity. He thought that his troops are going to march directly to

Keeve, take control, topple the Zelensky regime, and probably put a puppet regime friendly to Moscow

in its place with Moscow controlling the territory, if not annexing all of Ukraine for that matter, as a part of

Mother Russia itself. Now, one of the things behind that, we just have to underline again,

is the civilizational reality, and that is the fact that Russia, and you could simply say Moscow

in this case, meaning the monarchy and the Soviet leadership, and now the Russian leadership, it has always looked

at Ukraine as necessary territory from other Russia. Territory at the very least to control,

territory that at least optimally would be absorbed within a larger Russia. But that's not what

happened. And instead, the Ukraine started fighting back. President Zelensky

rallied his people. And even though Ukraine itself has all kinds of problems, including endemic

...