Russian President Vladimir Putin told the Trump administration earlier this week that he would end the war with Ukraine in exchange for the region in eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The WSJ cited European and Ukrainian officials, who were briefed by Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff, on discussions with Putin. Putin reportedly made the offer to Witkoff during their meeting in Moscow on Wednesday.

Russia wants full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions, along with the Crimean Peninsula that Russia annexed in 2014. Russian forces are now mostly in control of Donetsk and Luhansk, but Ukrainian troops are still fighting back in some areas in the regions.

European officials told the WSJ that they were concerned over Putin’s proposal, saying that it could be the Russian dictator’s way of avoiding punishment from President Trump, who is expected to impose secondary tariffs on Russia. European leaders also questioned whether Putin would be willing to give up fighting for Ukraine’s Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, which are southwest of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Trump announced on Friday that he would be meeting with Putin on August 15 in Alaska. “The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska. Further details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Trump said at the White House earlier on Friday that a summit with Putin had been in the works, and a location for talks had been decided upon. Some of Trump’s stipulations for the summit include that no European leaders be present and that Putin agree to also meet with Zelensky.

“Putin, I believe, wants to see peace, and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky wants to see peace,” he said.

The president added that there would be “some swapping” of territories between Russia and Ukraine.

“It’s very complicated, but we’re going to get some back and we’re going to get some switched … to the betterment of both,” he added.

Trump’s deadline for Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine ended on Friday, unless he agrees to extend it, with a summit between Putin and Zelensky appearing more likely. Asked whether the deadline was still firm, Trump replied, “We’re going to see what [Putin] has to say. It’s going to be up to him.”

The president ramped up the pressure on Putin to end the conflict, which has resulted in an estimated hundreds of thousands of deaths over the past three years, as Putin continued to launch drone and missile attacks targeting Ukrainian civilian centers. Last week, Trump also repositioned two nuclear submarines after former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened that Trump’s ultimatums to Putin were a “step towards war.”

Most people who engage with AI do so in a fun and marginal way. But there is a very serious political side to it that the Trump administration understands.

In an attempt to actually push artificial intelligence forward, the federal government is pushing for vast energy exploration, which is a very good thing.

AI requires extraordinary energy consumption. China right now is vastly out-producing us on an energy level. They have no environmental regulations, so they’re ramming through huge energy projects that are designed in order to foster their AI system.

The United States, under President Trump, is opening up the energy sector, which is absolutely necessary. The United States is also deregulating a lot of the tech economy, which is excellent. It means that there will be more capital that flows into the AI race, and that matters for both reasons, military and technological.

American companies are still leading this race. Yesterday, ChatGPT released GPT-5, which is their new flagship AI model. “OpenAI executives called GPT-5 a “major upgrade” over the systems that previously powered ChatGPT, saying the new technology was faster, more accurate and less likely to ‘hallucinate,’ or make stuff up,” The New York Times reported. “OpenAI has consistently improved the technology that underpins its chatbot. … OpenAI’s many rivals, including Google, Meta, the start-up Anthropic and China’s DeepSeek, have released similar technologies. This is the first time that OpenAI has used a so-called reasoning model to power the free version of ChatGPT. Unlike the previous technologies, a reasoning model can spend time ‘thinking’ through complex problems before settling on an answer.” 

So, instead of AI being a predictive text mechanism, it basically checks its own work to prevent errors. All of this is indeed transformative, and the U.S. federal workforce is apparently going to be provided access to ChatGPT at essentially no cost. It’s going to filter through to the federal workforce, which is good.

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But this does raise the question of what we do with China, because it is a race between the United States and China.

There is some conflicting thinking among people on the Right about what to do with China. Some believe that China should be provided access to everything except the H100 from Nvidia, because if we get China dependent on American silicon, they will have to build on our platforms, and that’s better than them developing their own industry in microchips domestically.

And then there is the side which I tend toward, which is: No, don’t give China anything. Make them steal it.

The Trump administration seems rather split on this; you’ll see the Trump administration say China is cheating. President Trump even went after the Intel CEO for having too many close ties to China. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas had called them out, pointing out that the deep relationship meant that Intel chips were probably getting into China illegally. Cotton wrote an open letter to Intel’s board with questions about the chipmaker’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s ties to Chinese firms. 

I agree with that.

On the other hand, the administration is also opening up the possibility of Nvidia shipping H20s to the Chinese government.

So, a policy must be settled on with regard to how to view China and developments in AI. Are we going to be in an open competition with China? Is it going to be a “frenemy” situation with China?

That remains utterly unclear.

The answer may well determine the future of the United States.