War is bad. It is the worst thing human beings do to each other, and the worst part of it is the starting — because once a war starts, stopping it takes years and takes other people's lives. That is the thought that hangs over the latest peace talks in Moscow, where President Trump's envoys sat across the Kremlin table from Vladimir Putin this week and made the simplest pitch there is: it is time for peace.
"It's time for peace. We have to solve this conflict," Steve Witkoff told Putin at the table, calling it a tough conflict for both countries and important work that everyone in the room was doing. Witkoff and Jared Kushner are now frequent guests in the Kremlin, and they carried the American case there in person after weeks of shuttle diplomacy: the fighting has to end, and it has to end at a table like this one.
From Putin, the answer at the table included a warning aimed at Europe: do not send peacekeepers. Any foreign troops in Ukraine, he said, would be legitimate targets for Russia. It is the same red line he has drawn before, stated again to the Americans' faces — a reminder that Moscow still talks about this war as one it is prepared to widen rather than close on anyone else's terms.
On a Kremlin conference call afterwards, Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov said the talks had been constructive — but there was no hint of any concessions by Moscow, and there was stinging criticism of European leaders, who were told that Europe has to decide if it wants war or peace. The tone of that call was very uncompromising, on Ukraine and on European security alike: the Kremlin repeated its old demand that NATO move its military infrastructure back from Central and Eastern Europe, and said there will be more demands to come.
From Moscow, the American envoys flew on to Dublin for talks with Ukraine's president. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meeting European leaders in Ireland and receiving strong support, put Kyiv's position plainly: it has got to be about a ceasefire in Ukraine, rather than the wider issues Russia wants to put on the table around security arrangements in Europe. Two agendas, then, still facing each other — a ceasefire first, says Kyiv; a new security order first, says Moscow — with America's envoys flying between them.
And underneath the diplomacy, ordinary people are simply tired. On the streets of Moscow, after nearly five years of war, the fatigue is easy to sense. "I want this to end as soon as possible," one woman, Nina, said. "It's a war that no one needs." Another resident, Ilya, said people feel the war's weight and hope that more peaceful times come. Russians, for now, wait — convinced they have little influence on what happens next.
That is where this leaves American families too. The United States has spent billions on this war and now carries the work of ending it, and every month it continues is another month of lives lost on both sides and of pressure kept on the fuel and food prices the war pushed up around the world. An honest end to it — a ceasefire that holds — is the one result that helps households in Ukraine, in Russia and in America at the same time. This week's talks produced the pitch but no concession, and the distance between the two is exactly why the oldest lesson of war is the one that matters: it is far easier to start than to stop, which is why just don't start it.
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