Ferragosto of fire. Or rather, of ice. Who would ever think of going to Alaska on the day when we Italians celebrate the sacred and culmination of secular (supposedly) Solleon-like fun?
The two gentlemen who will pass (if all is confirmed) on August 15 between the ice are named Donald Trump, President of the United States, and Vladimir Putin, undisputed czar of Russia. The most powerful man in the world and the man who leads one of the World’s military superpowers.
Do they meet to have a spritz in a place surely cooler than the others? No, they are meeting to talk about Ukraine, to try to find an agreement that will end one of the bloodiest wars of modern times to boot in a European theater that, with the exception of the very harsh events of the violent end of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, has lived basically at peace since the end of World War II.
The meeting is of the so-called historic kind, although there are many concrete problems. Will Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, be there or not? And what kind of negotiations will be set up, punitive for Kiev and the EU’s geopolitical posture on the conflict or not?
Trump’s deputy, Vance, has already announced that it will be a peace, if there is one, that will give neither on Putin’s nor Zelensky’s side. Meanwhile, Russian propaganda continues to argue with Europe, and that is not a good sign.
On the table in the what’s what we’ve known for some time now: what has crystallized the field militarily, namely Crimea and much of the Donbass, creation of a security buffer (entrusted to no one knows who), new elections in Kiev, which will join the EU but not NATO.
Like not like, right not right? It will be seen. But one must be nondefeatist a priori and believe in this meeting, beyond the symbols of the Arctic where there are American and Russian interests and beyond the vetoes that Zelensky and the EU. No peace without us. They may be right but the risk is No Peace at all.
So more deaths, more horror, more gutted houses and things. And the absence of any future. Far from reconstruction…it will only be destruction.
The article Cold Peace comes from TheNewyorker.
