To a degree, Vladimir Putin has already won.

Securing a one-on-one summit with a US president is something he has long coveted. American leaders rarely meet pariahs. Sitting down with Donald Trump cloaks Putin in legitimacy , flatters his great-power pretensions and delivers a propaganda coup to burnish his domestic standing – a prize won not for a tangible concession, just the merest hint of one.

Having banked a symbolic victory, Putin will hope Friday’s summit in Alaska yields a far greater one: the legitimisation of his Ukrainian land grab .

For Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s leader, this is arguably the most perilous moment of the war – one in which his country’s fate could be decided at a meeting he wasn’t invited to.

If the worst happens, he and his European allies fear, it

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