Not long ago, I participated in one of the many off-the-record discussions in Washington about ending the war in Ukraine. This conversation was quite detailed, with American academics and policy wonks asking a European who was especially well-informed on Russian matters just what a land-for-peace deal or security guarantees acceptable to all parties might look like. When my turn to speak came around, however, I had to wonder whether all this wasn’t moot.

There just isn’t much time to reach an agreement – let alone implement one –before the end of Donald Trump’s second term. And when America elects its next president in November 2028, Vladimir Putin will be 75 years old. It’s hard to imagine he’ll still be ruling Russia by the time he’s 80, should he live to see that milestone. Regime change is coming to Russia sooner rather than later, and Putin is hardly in a position to name a successor in advance. Not unless he wants to hasten his departure from this mortal coil.

During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union could negotiate as impersonal institutions – though Ronald Reagan, at the end of the frozen conflict, excelled in making superpower politics as personal as possible. Even Reagan felt constrained by the grim reaper: he used to joke that Soviet premiers kept dying on him before diplomacy could make any headway.

Today,........

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