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to maximize pressure on Ukraine and strengthen the Kremlin’s negotiating position, Ukrainian government and military analysts say.The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said Tuesday that Russia is “attempting to prolong negotiations to extract additional concessions from the United States and while making additional battlefield advances.”

Associated Press writers Eléonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine atPresident Vladimir Putin visited Russia’s

for the first time since Moscow claimed that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the area last month, the Kremlin said Wednesday.Putin visited the region bordering Ukraine the previous day, according to the Kremlin.

Ukrainian forces made a

into Kursk in August 2024 in one of their biggest battlefield successes in theMichael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., said there is at least one precedent for Trump’s approach.

“It’s going to drive the people in Washington crazy, but it most closely resembles the Obama administration,” he said.On Barack Obama’s first visit as president to the Middle East, he too skipped Israel. Oren, a critic of that administration who was Israel’s envoy to the U.S. at the time, said Obama repeatedly violated an unspoken rule of U.S.-Israeli relations — that there be no surprises. That led to public spats with Netanyahu, especially around the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal.

Few expect a repeat under Trump — or that he will publicly press Israel to wind down the war in Gaza, despiteunleashed by its war and blockade.