U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff was slated to hold talks Tuesday with Mr. Zelenskyy in Norway amid growing Trump administration pressure on Kyiv to stop striking Russian oil refineries and reports that Russian President Vladimir Putin is pushing for a summit with Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on ending the war.

Mr. Rubio told reporters Monday that “there’s been talk” of a U.S.-China-Russia summit but did not confirm whether Mr. Trump had agreed to it or if a date had been set. The developments come as tension soars between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president has openly criticized Mr. Trump’s waiver of sanctions on Russian oil sales and deal to purchase Russian diesel fuel. Mr. Trump has said it’s time for Ukraine to “get a new president.” The Kyiv Post reports that Mr. Zelenskyy seeks assurances that the U.S. will continue supplying weapons and intelligence to stave off an anticipated Russian escalation heading into the winter.

Pakistani Army Chief of Staff and Field Marshal Asim Munir arrived in Tehran Tuesday for a series of high-level talks with Iranian officials on the status of stalled U.S.-Iran peace talks. His trip also may focus on pushing Tehran to pressure Iran-backed Houthi militants into negotiating a ceasefire with Saudi Arabia amid an escalating Saudi-Houthi war.

Pakistan inked a security pact with Saudi Arabia and Turkey in August, and Islamabad has sought to fashion itself as a diplomatic intermediary with Iran, which shares a nearly 600-mile border with Pakistan. Russia is also trying to intervene. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Tehran Monday.

Field Marshal Munir’s visit, meanwhile, comes amid reports of spiraling carnage tied to a Houthi missile strike on a Saudi-aligned Yemeni military camp. The death toll from the strike rose to 73 on Tuesday, making it the deadliest attack since the Saudi-Houthi war was sparked this year on the periphery of the U.S.-Iran war.

Space analysts and national security insiders say the Russian satellite Cosmos 2612 likely intended to attack a key U.S. radar satellite in what would have been the first instance of warfare in orbit, but that the Kremlin may have called off the operation at the eleventh hour.

Questions were still swirling Monday after the highly dangerous incident in which Cosmos 2612 came within an estimated 85 feet of ICEYE-X36, a U.S.-Finnish space asset believed to provide high-resolution intelligence to the Ukrainian military.

Specialists say the encounter appears to be intentional on Moscow’s part, the result of months of careful planning and perfectly choreographed movements by the Russian satellite. The operation has fueled speculation that Moscow intended to launch a history-making kinetic attack in space or executed a dress rehearsal for such a mission.

For years, the nation’s elite military forces have relied on space capabilities such as GPS and satellite communications for battlefield intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. 

The Pentagon this month announced the creation of a U.S. Space Forces Special Operations Command to streamline the integration of space force capabilities into elite special forces missions.

A formal activation ceremony is scheduled for Nov. 2 for SPACEFOR-SOC, which will allow commanders in the field to directly request specialized space effects, such as tactical satellite communications, electromagnetic warfare to counter adversary GPS jamming and tactical signal and missile warning.

Many observers assume the “most likely cause of a regional escalation will be renewed Iranian-American tensions in the Persian Gulf — and that those would likely draw Israel and Lebanon into the conflict,” Eran Ortal, a reserve brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces, writes in an op-ed for The Washington Times.

“A tense calm has prevailed in Lebanon since Israel’s military withdrew to the ‘yellow line’ outlined in the June ceasefire between the two countries,” writes Gen. Ortal, a visiting scholar at the American Foreign Policy Council. He asserts that “the prevailing assumption seems to be that the current paralysis in Lebanon can continue for an extended period.

“Yet Hezbollah’s dramatic buildup and the nature of its new weapons suggest a different dynamic. Odds are that by the end of the coming winter, Hezbollah will have acquired a dramatic capability for attack,” he writes. “In the coming months, Israel might need to decide whether a preemptive attack is necessary to eliminate the new and ominous threat posed by Hezbollah’s changing arsenal.”

• Oct. 20 — Toward a New Golden Age of Science: A Conversation with White House Office of Science and Tech Director Michael Kratsios, American Enterprise Institute

• Oct. 21 — A Discussion with U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Andrew Puzder, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 22 — What’s at Stake in the Israeli Election? Brookings Institution 

• Oct. 22 — Israel’s First Post-Oct. 7 Election: What Could Change? Middle East Institute

• Oct. 27 — Chemistry of Combat: Rebuilding America’s Energetics Base, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 28-29 — China’s Power: Up for Debate 2026, Center for Strategic and International Studies

• Oct. 30 — Gen. Dagvin R.M. Anderson, Commander of U.S. Africa Command, on U.S. Strategy and Security in Africa, Atlantic Council

• Nov. 17 — Special Threat Status Event: The Golden Age of Space, Threat Status

• Nov. 20-22 — Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada, HFX