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
Wars 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.
