President-elect Donald Trump took the occasion of the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral to call for a cease-fire in Ukraine. The photographs of the American leader shaking hands with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the French Presidential Palace intimated that he might be ready to forgive conflicts with the wartime president and his publicly recorded resentments with Ukraine, even after Kyiv found itself bizarrely enmeshed in the middle of an American presidential election for a third election cycle in a row. “Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump thundered on Truth Social. Ending the war between Russia and Ukraine will constitute a major foreign policy challenge to the incoming administration, the war’s quick resolution having been one of Trump’s core campaign promises. As a result, both Moscow and Kyiv view Trump’s victory as a viable opportunity to conclude the war on their own terms.

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