The problem with the future is that it is both unpredictable and inescapable. You can never know with certainty what tomorrow will bring, but you must prepare for it nonetheless. This may seem trivial. And yet it remains a great challenge.

Consider, for instance, current international reactions to the scheduled summit between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump. The announcement of the meeting, later specified to take place in Alaska on 15 August, was a surprise. But then again, not really. Viewed against the background of Trump’s longstanding signaling of respect for Russia, as well as an interest in normalizing the relationship between Moscow and Washington, it was actually the culmination of a sometimes messy but real trend.

But within the short-term context of a recent American turn against Russia, it was yet another proof that Trump can be hard to predict – trends can tell you only so much. While some observers believed the latest American zig to be the last, others – full disclosure: this one included – argued (and, frankly, hoped) that another zag was possible.

And here we are. It is true that RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan dares not predict the summit’s outcome or even whether it will really take place. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned that we are still far from a new détente. Yet there is no denying that, at least for now, we are not where we were during the preceding Biden administration either. Namely, in a hopeless dead end of an escalating yet failing Western proxy war, flanked by a literal anti-diplomacy; that is, an obstinate refusal to communicate that was perversely elevated to the rank of policy.

For now, it is impossible to predict where we will go from here. Once – and if – the summit in Alaska takes place, and hopefully a follow-up meeting in Russia as well, will we finally have left the bloody and dangerous stagnation that was produced by, firstly, the West permitting Kiev to sabotage the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, then the stonewalling of Moscow’s last-chance negotiation offer of late 2021, and finally the West’s nixing of an almost-peace in April 2022? Or will we be disappointed and face more of the same: an ongoing Western proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, or even worse?

One thing is clear, however. An end to the fighting and a halfway decent settlement would be very good news not only for Ukraine but also for the rest of the world, including a NATO-EU Europe that currently is, or at least pretends to be, ready to spoil a quick end to the........

© RT.com