In Alaska the Russian leader will claim to want peace, but only on his terms – and play on the president’s desperation to ‘make a deal’ quickly
W
ars do not have to be won. Total victories loom largest in the popular imagination because those are the stories nations always tell to sustain patriotic feeling. The fuller version of history is written in stalemates.
That is worth remembering when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. Both leaders have incentives to pretend that Ukraine’s fate can be settled decisively without any Ukrainians at the negotiating table. That doesn’t make it so.
For the US president, this is a project of personal vanity. He promised to end the war within days of returning to the White House. The persistence of hostilities seven months after his inauguration is a rebuke to his self-image as the world’s master dealmaker.
