What to expect as Putin and Trump thrash out their deal

The Kremlin has now confirmed that Vladimir Putin will speak on the phone to Donald Trump today. The White House says Volodymyr Zelensky will come to Washington on Friday. Peace – or at least a ceasefire – seems very likely soon.

- M A R K A L M O N D

But never forget, the devil is in the details – and a hastily cobbled-together deal could be very fragile. There will be hardliners on either side who don’t want to give peace a chance. Let’s consider what might be in a deal agreeable to Trump and Putin – and swallowable by Zelensky.

Where any ceasefire line would run is a key question. But it would be deceptively simple to say it should be where the fighting front is today – that gives Russia an incentive to keep attacking until the last possible moment to gain as much territory as possible; and for Ukraine to try a surprise counterattack to gain at least a symbolic positive marker for the end of fighting.

The banks of the Dnipro River offer one long “natural” dividing line, with the Ukrainians holding the western bank and the Russians still stuck on the east – though they have been trying to land troops to the west. Elsewhere, northwards to the Ukrainian-Russian border just east of Kharkiv and north of Sumy, the front line is very contested.

Without international observers – or umpires – to delimit the “line of contact” and patrol it, hardliners on either side (as well as chance confrontations in the grey zone between the two armies) could easily reignite conflict – and that’s without a cynic like Putin deciding to renew the war when the West’s interest, particularly America’s, has moved on.