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.

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.

Putin also once thought the war could be concluded swiftly. He launched his all-out invasion in February 2022 expecting Kyiv to fall within weeks. When Ukrainian resistance thwarted that plan, the Russian president switched to a long game of attrition, relying on superior troop numbers and aerial bombardment to degrade Ukraine’s viability as a sovereign state. Russia’s industrial base and public opinion have been fired up for perpetual war. Kremlin propagandists boast of the nation’s limitless military stamina, while Russian commanders keep promising to break through enemy lines and initiate the long-awaited capitulation.

Putin has to believe in the inevitability of Ukrainian defeat because any other scenario – even a ceasefire that allows him to hold territory captured so far – leaves the historic mission he set himself unfulfilled. He will harbour a vengeful grievance for as long as

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