Hello and welcome to NewsHour.
It's coming to you live from the BBC World Service studios in central London.
I'm Tim Franks.
The White House gave us a few more morsels today ahead of Friday's summit between Presidents Trump and Putin.
That the two men will meet in the city of Anchorage in Alaska.
That it will be, as they put it, a listening exercise.
And that it will be a one-on-one.
In other words, the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, will definitely not be invited.
For his part,
President Zelensky has been assiduously trying to do some scene-setting himself today with a briefing to reporters in Kiev.
That was shortly before we came on air.
He warned that Ukraine could not simply abandon territory conquered by invading Russian forces.
Yet he was also speaking as reports were coming in of some further Russian advances in the east,
albeit small and albeit at huge cost to the Russian military.
Jonathan Beale is our defence correspondent and he's in the Ukrainian capital Kiev.
What can you tell us first about those latest military movements?
Well, President Zelensky talked about this,
which essentially said was three groups of Russian soldiers advancing nine to ten kilometres behind Ukraine's front line in that area of Picross,
an area which they've been fighting for for the best part of this year,
longer than a year, and where they are taking territory and they are making gains,