Editorial. Trump-Putin Summit: Red Carpet and Status Quo

No more peace plan than butter on a branch at the end of the Anchorage summit . Because when the American president speaks of a "very productive" meeting and the Russian of a "constructive" discussion, the translation from diplomatic language to everyday French is roughly: "Move along, there is nothing to see..." Donald Trump 's conclusion - "We are not there yet, but we have made progress" - is equivalent to a warm: " See you next time !" Which, for the moment, unfortunately contributes much more to Vladimir Putin 's return to the saddle on the international stage than to stopping the fighting in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky , who is to be received in Washington on Monday, will have tasted it like a connoisseur.

Kept at a distance, Europe, for its part, reaffirms its position, a mixture of intransigence and impotence: keeping Moscow under pressure with economic sanctions, something the Kremlin pretends to laugh at... That's for those who want to see the glass half empty. Others will argue that, far from Anchorage, certainly, European leaders have continued to count the points, betting – but do they have a choice? – that time is on their side. This seems to be confirmed by the crumbling of the Russian economy, outside the military-industrial complex .

But by playing the exhaustion card, the Old Continent is taking an enormous risk: that of misjudging the resilience of a nation that Putin continues to hold with an iron fist, despite 42 months of war.

Waiting for the ogre to fall like a ripe fruit means, for the time being, accepting that the duo who just left Alaska will finish reorchestrating the world order with four hands. A dark horizon.