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

6th September, 2026

Envoys go to Moscow, then to Kyiv, and we are told the talks were “substantive.” Substantive is the word diplomats use when there is nothing solid to report but much to conceal. Three hours with the master of the Kremlin produces, by the account of his own aide, a conversation “highly useful” - useful to whom is the question the sentence was built to avoid.

The pattern is an old one and I know its shape. A strongman demands territory, the peacemakers shuttle between capitals, and each journey ends with the aggressor holding a little more of what he took by force and the victim holding a little less of what was hers. Munich taught us the arithmetic of such arrangements: peace purchased with another’s land is not peace but an instalment plan for war. The men who fly to Moscow believe they are ending a conflict. Often they are merely scheduling its sequel.

What troubles me most is not the diplomacy but the order of it. One does not negotiate with the wolf and then inform the shepherd of the terms. The Ukrainians - who have fought in their trenches, in their cities, in the black earth of their own fields - learn of their future from visitors arriving after the Moscow dinner has concluded. A nation that has bled for three years deserves better than to be handed a map drawn in another man’s parlour.

Still, I do not despair of the Americans. Their energy is real, their impatience useful, and even a flawed negotiation is preferable to a cold shoulder. But let no one mistake the nature of the beast. The tyrant signs what suits him and tears up what does not, and he judges his interlocutors by one measure only: what he can take without cost.

The envoys land in Kyiv tomorrow. Let them listen there more than they spoke in Moscow. That alone would be a novelty worth recording.