Attempts by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin to talk about peace in Ukraine have predictably failed. First, because the Russian dictator has no intention of ending the war — it has become the guarantee of his political and physical survival.Second, Russia’s foreign minister and one of the pillars of Putinism, Sergey Lavrov, clearly outlined what Russia wants now. He said that an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine would “preserve the Nazi regime” over “a vast part of Ukraine” and legalize the ban on the Russian language.Third — and this, at least, is progress — the U.S. delegation is now led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a man with both status and a reputation for professional diplomacy. That’s a vast improvement over Trump’s longtime golf partner Steve Witkoff, whose previous “negotiation rounds” we all witnessed — from eating chebureks in Moscow to attending talks without an interpreter and confusing which troops Putin had promised to withdraw — his or ours.According to The Wall Street Journal, right after Rubio spoke with Lavrov, he gathered his team and said that negotiating with Russia now is “a complete waste of time.” The moment Moscow realized the cheburek games were over, it began to back off. Most likely, there will be no meeting in Budapest. And given that Trump is soon set to meet China’s leader Xi, there’s little point in these talks anyway.In reality, as General Valerii Zaluzhnyi wrote in his latest column, it is precisely this ill-fated “multi-vector” policy that has made Ukraine the fault line where the world is tearing apart — a battlefield where China and the U.S. will shape a new world order. It’s tragic, because it’s our people in the trenches, and our kindergartens, railways, and residential neighborhoods that the missiles and shrapnel strike.But this is the price of years of political recklessness and the dismantling of our army in the name of cheap populism and the illusion of friendship with Moscow.Just days ago, American media leaked the real “inside story” of Trump and Putin’s talks in Alaska. In a closed meeting with only a handful of aides present, Putin rejected a U.S. proposal to lift sanctions in exchange for a ceasefire in Ukraine, insisting that the war would end only if Ukraine surrendered and ceded more of Donbas. Even the notoriously eccentric Trump was reportedly stunned by Putin’s historical lecture about Rurik and Bohdan Khmelnytsky, meant to prove that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people.” It’s no surprise Washington has since ramped up its talk of Tomahawks — to deflate Moscow’s pseudo-historian arrogance.After the latest talks collapsed, Russia switched tactics — brutally simple and cynical: to exhaust us to the point where any ceasefire, on any terms, feels like a relief. To make the endless war synonymous with cold homes, darkness, and the unbearable grief of seeing your child carried out of a bombed kindergarten. If this drags on long enough, there will be those within Ukrainian society begging Zelenskyy to go to Moscow and “end the suffering.” Then comes the disgraceful capitulation, accepted by some and rejected by others — and goodbye to any semblance of democratic government.Russia’s perfect scenario is a long, grinding civil war, where it can keep slicing off new territories without launching another full-scale campaign.All this shows how dangerous it is to keep Ukrainian society lulled by warm illusions — promising “peace formulas,” claiming the war would end in 2023, then in 2024, then in 2025. How reckless it was to insist that the Global South would soon pressure Russia alongside us. And how risky it was to stoke anti-American sentiment at home without understanding who the Republicans are or how Trump became their lasting face.“We have come closer to ending the war,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said recently with perhaps too much optimism. Giving people hopeful news can be useful for sustaining morale — but it also dulls the sense of urgency about the fight and clouds the real question: how do we live and endure if this war lasts another year or two, when the window for negotiations closes and we must wait for the next one to open?Specially for EspresoAbout the author: Maryna Danyliuk-Yarmolaieva, journalistThe editorial board does not necessarily share the opinions expressed in the blogs.