After all the pre-summit talk of land swaps and the technicalities of a possible cease-fire in Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin made clear after his meeting in Alaska with President Trump that his deepest concern is not an end to three and a half years of bloodshed. Rather, it is with what he called the “situation around Ukraine,” code for his standard litany of grievances over Russia’s lost glory.

Returning to grudges he first aired angrily in 2007 at a security conference in Munich, and revived in February 2022 to announce and justify his full scale-invasion of Ukraine, Mr. Putin in his post-summit remarks in Alaska demanded that “a fair balance in the security sphere in Europe and the world as whole must be restored.”

Only this, he said, would remove “the root causes of the crisis” in Ukraine — Kremlin shorthand for Russia’s diminished status since it lost the Cold War with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of Moscow’s hegemony over Eastern Europe.

Tracking Heat Across the World

Intense heat has stifled the globe this past year, contributing to record-breaking hot summers and winters in both hemispheres.

See temperatures as… f° c°

High-temperature forecast for Saturday 70 °F 80 °F 90 °F 100 °F 110 °F 120 °F Sources: University of Maine Climate Change Institute and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Global Forecast System

See temperatures as… f° c°

Where the forecast temperatures for Saturday were unusually hot Degrees above or below average for Aug. 16 0 °F +5 °F +10 °F +15 °F Sources: University of Maine Climate Change Institute and the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Global Forecast System Note: Averages based on data from 1979 to 2000.

The bouts of exceptional warmth are driven in large part by the continued emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly from the burning of fossil fuels.

But it may also serve as a warning that Russian forces will accept heavy bloodshed in their invasion, which is already reaching into civilian areas, on the grounds that responsibility for loss of life ultimately rests on Ukrainian forces for not immediately surrendering.

I would now like to say something very important for those who may be tempted to interfere in these developments from the outside. No matter who tries to stand in our way or all the more so create threats for our country and our people, they must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history.

This statement is widely seen as a threat of nuclear strikes against any Western country that might militarily intervene against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Russian threats of using nuclear weaponry to retaliate against an attack on Russia itself are nothing new. But Mr. Putin, in extending this nuclear umbrella to cover his invasion forces in Ukraine, has issued a major and potentially destabilizing threat. Russian forces have carried out nuclear exercises in recent days, likely intended as a signal of his sincerity.

Citizens of Russia … It is our strength and our readiness to fight that are the bedrock of independence and sovereignty and provide the necessary foundation for building a reliable future for your home, your family, and your Motherland.

Mr. Putin ends by appealing directly to Russian citizens to support his war in Ukraine as a necessary national struggle.

But there is every indication, including in opinion polls, that Russian citizens, as well as members of the country’s all-important elite, do not want a war with Ukraine and are deeply skeptical of Mr. Putin’s aggression. If Mr. Putin hopes to stave off public or political backlash as the war’s already-mounting political and economic toll on Russia rise, appeals to national struggle, such as this one, have so far proven severely insufficient.