Not agreeing with Putin - just my opinion.
I agree. Putin met with Trump because he's trying to buy time.
At this rate, Russia will take all of the Donbas in five years from now.
Trump met with Putin to find an off ramp to this war and end it because Ukraine's military is critical low on troops and is the verge of giving up huge chucks of territory.
Ukraine has a very short period of time to avoid being in a situation of losing everything east of the Dnieper river.
"It is worrying that Russia's territorial gains, especially in July, were quite significant and larger than in previous months. The Russians have advanced 10-12 km along several axes. This is something we haven't seen before. If there were any territorial conquests before, they were concentrated around one area. Now we have several areas where the front is starting to leak."
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"[...] when it comes to the Ukrainian soldier, the biggest problem is that he's just... not there. And this is due to the fact that the scale of desertion and abandonment of units without consent is very high. This creates a dangerous situation: if you take into account the loss of soldiers on the front line, desertion and abandonment of units without consent, the number of soldiers on the Ukrainian side decreases month after month. Although officially the Ukrainians mobilize 20-30 thousand people every month, most of them do not get to the front line."