Five-Hour Putin–Witkoff–Kushner Kremlin Session Yields No Ukraine Deal

Great-power wars often end at tables, not trenches; yet the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 show that when one side senses battlefield momentum, talks become a venue to formalise gains, not concede them. Putin today, like Nixon then, believes time favours his armies. The episode also revives an older tradition of back-channel diplomacy—Colonel House in 1915, Kissinger’s secret 1971 Beijing trip—now carried out by a private equity manager tied to foreign money, underscoring a 21st-century fusion of statecraft and capital. Long-term, the failure signals a shift from post-1991 multilateralism toward ad-hoc, leader-driven deals, with Europe increasingly excluded and therefore re-arming. On a 100-year timeline, whether these informal U.S.–Russia contacts evolve into a new “Yalta” or collapse like Munich will shape the norms governing borders, sovereignty, and the legitimacy of private intermediaries in war-and-peace decisions.