MICHAEL KIMMAGE is Professor of History at the Catholic University of America. He is the author of Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability.

That included a Monday joint statement from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal calling Trump’s threat of ramped-up economic penalties if Russia doesn’t cut a peace deal in next 50 days “a real executive hammer to drive the parties to the negotiating table.”

A planned classical music concert in Italy, featuring a Russian conductor known to be an old friend and vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is sparking furor after the wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged Italian authorities to cancel it.

“Putin will not negotiate as a loser,” one of his longtime associates tells TIME by phone from Moscow. “He knows that winners don’t get punished, and if he wins, all of this” — the sanctions, the tariffs — “will go away.”

Daniel Martindale, a U.S. citizen who helped the Kremlin target Ukrainian troops and was then spirited out of eastern Ukraine by Russian special forces, has received a Russian passport in Moscow. Russian state television broadcast a report on Tuesday showing Martindale,

A Russian official says American Daniel Martindale has been rewarded with citizenship for spying on Ukraine, "by decree of our President Vladimir Putin."

Prior to the announcement of the training, the Chinese state-run Global Times published an interview on July 10 with Serbian Lieutenant Colonel Dalibor Aleksic, who commands an air defense unit operating two China-supplied weapon systems: the FK-3 and the HQ-17AE.

President Donald Trump has softened his stance on NATO. He once called the Western alliance "obsolete." Now, he says, it's the "opposite of that."