By Mary Ilyushina, The Washington Post

Article contains links, including the following (in color): "Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony in Moscow on June 22 marking the 85th anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/AP)." Russia’s war in Ukraine is stalling — on the battlefield and in the corridors of diplomacy.

For months, high-ranking Russian officials insisted that a path to ending the war in Ukraine — largely on Moscow’s maximalist terms — had been decided at a meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump last August in Anchorage. Only Ukraine’s intransigence stood as an obstacle.

But that narrative has unraveled — perhaps because the only way to get the United States to help broker a new deal is admitting there never was a previous one.

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