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President Donald Trump states he is prepared to impose a “second phase” of sanctions on Russia following its largest drone and missile attack on Sunday, which struck a cabinet building and claimed the lives of a mother and her baby.
“Yeah, I am,” Trump mentioned to a reporter, in response to whether he is ready to escalate sanctions, amid ongoing efforts to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt military actions or meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Trump indicated he plans to speak with Putin “over the next couple of days,” though the agenda for this conversation is still uncertain.
A family with a baby seeks refuge in a basement during a Russian missile and drone attack on Kyiv, Ukraine on Sept. 7, 2025. (Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
The attack followed shortly after Putin claimed he was open to meeting with Zelenskyy if the Ukrainian leader visited Moscow – a proposal deemed risky for Zelenskyy by Western and Ukrainian officials and seen as lacking genuine intent for peace talks.
On Sunday, Trump said European leaders would visit Washington D.C. in the upcoming week to deliberate on next steps to end the war, though he did not specify who would attend or if Zelenskyy would be involved.
Putin said last month that his terms for ending the war would focus on freezing the front lines where they stand in Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia, but appeared to suggest that Ukraine would need to withdraw its forces from Donetsk and Luhansk, amid other stipulations.
Rescue workers extinguish a fire in a 9-story apartment building in the Sviatoshynskyi district, hit by a Russian drone and partially destroyed from the 4th to the 8th floors in Kyiv, Ukraine on Sept. 7, 2025. (Yan Dobronosov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images)
But on Monday, Ukraine’s military said it had recaptured the strategically important town of Zarichne in Donetsk – a region which Russia was assessed to occupy roughly 75% of last month.
Zarichne sits near Luhansk – a region which Russia is assessed to nearly fully occupy – and is near key transport routes connecting strategically important cities in Donetsk.
Ukraine last month also said it had made advances in areas near Pokrovsk in western Donetsk, where Russian forces have been concentrating their summer operation efforts.
