On: Live: Trump's envoys head to Ukraine after 'substantive' talks with Putin

6th of September, 2026

I must tell you what strikes me in this news: they speak of ending a war as one might negotiate a shipment of goods. A businessman and a son-in-law, three hours in Moscow, “highly useful,” says the Kremlin - and no one can say what was decided, or for whom.

I have sat across a kitchen table from a man who owed money, and I know what a “substantive plan” means when the debtor does the describing. It means the plan is substantive to him. The question I would put to these envoys, if any of them would take tea with me, is this: who is not in the room? The Ukrainian woman hanging her washing in a cellar because her roof is gone is not in the room. The farmer whose field is seeded with mines rather than wheat - he is not at the table, though the table purports to divide his table. You cannot settle another family’s affairs without asking the family. Yet this is the whole history of great powers, is it not? They divide the map and then act surprised when the people on the map object.

And I note the arithmetic no one performs. A peace purchased with another nation’s land is not peace; it is a lease on the next war. My own household taught me this: when I once settled a dispute between tenants by giving one of them the other’s pasture, I did not end the quarrel. I furnished it.

Still - envoys moving are better than envoys sitting. I will not let my weariness become cynicism, for cynicism is a luxury of those whose homes are standing. But I would have the negotiators keep one ledger entry before all others: a peace that costs the invaded everything and the invader nothing is not a bargain. It is an invoice, and the interest comes due later, and it is always the children who pay it.