Between Syria and Iran, NATO and the European Union, the agenda will be crowded next week in Helsinki when President Donald Trump sits down with Vladimir Putin of Russia. So crowded that the war in eastern Ukraine may end up getting brushed aside, just one among many bargaining chips that Trump and Putin could put on the table.
That would not sit well with Kurt Volker, the U.S. diplomat responsible for negotiating an end to that war. But it wouldn’t entirely surprise him. “Many people have convinced themselves that, Oh, it’s just a frozen conflict, when it’s really not,” Volker says. “There’s literally fighting every night. There’s shells, mortars, snipers, people getting killed.”
