Europe’s show of unity at the White House is a plus for Ukraine, but peace is still a distant dream | Andrey Kurkov

As Russian drones and missiles continue to rain down death, the prospect of a Putin-Zelenskyy meeting seems unlikely

It was night in Ukraine when President Trump met President Putin in Alaska - a night during which Russia shelled only frontline Ukrainian cities. People in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Dnipro and even Kharkiv could sleep, but they did not. They were waiting for news from Alaska. I was also awake and watching the news feed, aware that this meeting would lead to nothing, or worse, something bad for Ukraine. But in difficult, seemingly hopeless situations, human nature is prone to desperate optimism. In the middle ages, people often hoped for a miracle, forgetting about the logic of events. So, the night of 15 August was a night of hope for a miracle, which, of course, did not happen.

Unlike on the eve of the Alaska meeting, in Ukraine, there was no particular tension in the buildup to the meeting of European leaders at the White House on Monday, despite images of a hugely powerful team arriving in Washington. Ukrainians seemed to sense that this meeting had to be visually positive in order to push into the shade the Alaska meeting, which ended in nothing, if not actual failure.