The Kremlin’s refusal to play ball with Zelensky is hardly a surprise. It is, in fact, the latest chapter in a dreary cycle of diplomatic theatre that has become the hallmark of this conflict. Today, the Russian President declined a meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, a move that British defence analysts have predictably seized upon as evidence of a ‘prolonged stalemate’.
But let us not mistake the symptom for the disease. The real story here is not about a missed handshake or a cancelled summit. It is about the creeping normalisation of a war without end, a condition that is becoming the West’s new permanent state of being.
We are witnessing the slow death of the idea that wars have conclusions. Instead, like Rome’s endless frontier skirmishes or the Hundred Years’ War, we are settling into a comfortable, low-grade crisis that energises our politicians, justifies our defence budgets, and provides a constant drip of righteous indignation. The analysts warn of a stalemate, but what they really mean is that no one has the political will to finish the thing.
So we drift, from crisis to crisis, pretending that every diplomatic snub is a fresh outrage rather than a predictable note in a dirge we have been humming for two years. The public, of course, is fed the same weary script: the West stands united, Ukraine fights for freedom, and Putin is the unredeemable villain. All true, perhaps, but irrelevant to the deeper malaise.
The real issue is that we have lost the habit of resolving conflicts. We prefer the moral clarity of the perpetual standoff to the messy, uncomfortable work of compromise. And so Putin can afford to snub Zelensky, because he knows that time is on his side—not because he will win, but because nobody has the guts to lose.
