The talks lasted for hours. Yet on key issues – above all, territory – there had not been so much as a baby step toward compromise. It was a deeply disheartening message to have to carry back to the White House.

Those words could equally well describe two attempts at U.S. shuttle diplomacy, 50 years apart.

Most recently, earlier this week in the Kremlin, Donald Trump’s Ukraine peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, sat down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Those talks made no breakthrough. On Thursday, the pair met Ukrainian negotiators in Florida.

Why We Wrote This

Donald Trump’s bursts of shuttle diplomacy to resolve international conflicts recall an earlier practitioner of the art – Henry Kissinger. But he treated negotiations as a marathon; Mr. Trump tries to sprint

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