Here is how things stand on Monday, August 18:

Politics and diplomacy

• The leaders of several European countries announced that they will accompany Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to meet with United States President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday to discuss ending Russia’s war on Ukraine.
• The leaders accompanying Zelenskyy will be: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.
• White House envoy Steve Witkoff said on Sunday that Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to “robust security guarantees” for Ukraine that were “game-changing” at a summit with Trump in Alaska on Friday.
• Zelenskyy welcomed Witkoff’s announcement, saying it was “a historic decision that the United States is ready to take part in security guarantees for Ukraine”. However, he added that the guarantees “must be developed with Europe’s participation”.
• Macron said that European leaders would ask “to what extent” Washington would participate in the security guarantees on Monday. Macron also said that “there is only one state proposing a peace that would be a capitulation: Russia”.
• Von der Leyen welcomed the proposal as an offer of NATO-style security guarantees from the US, adding that the “coalition of the willing, including the European Union, is ready to do its share”.
• Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova, in a statement shared on Telegram on Sunday, said that Macron’s claims of capitulation were an “abject lie”.
• In an interview with CNN, Witkoff also said that Russia had “made some concessions” in relation to “all five of those regions”, in an apparent reference to the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhia and Crimea.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on NBC that a ceasefire “is not off the table” but “what we ultimately are aiming for is an end to this war”, a day after Trump said he was aiming for a peace agreement without a prior ceasefire.
• Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday morning, simply saying: “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!”, without elaborating.

Fighting

• Russian forces killed five people and injured four in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said in a post on Telegram on Sunday. The attacks killed two people in Raiske, two more people in Sviatohorivka, and one person in Kostiantynivka, Filashkin said.
• Four people were injured in a Ukrainian drone attack on a commercial facility in the village of Rakitnoye in Russia’s Belgorod region, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said in a post on Telegram on Sunday.
• Russia’s state-run TASS news agency reported on Sunday that in total, Ukrainian forces struck 13 locations across Belgorod in one day, using 111 drones and 52 munitions.
• TASS also reported on Sunday that Russian forces shot down four aerial bombs and 300 drones in the past day.
• The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces claimed that Ukrainian forces cleared the city of Pokrovsk of Russian forces and occupiers. Ukrainian forces advanced up to 1km (0.6 miles), in the Yablunivka area of the Sumy region, the General Staff added in a post on Telegram on Sunday.