The crystal ball of the wagering public has spoken with rare finality: Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will not shake hands again before the new year arrives. Polymarket, the prediction exchange, now registers a flat 0% probability on a second summit occurring by December 31, 2025 — a verdict as unambiguous as any this correspondent has witnessed in years of consulting the markets. The diplomats, it seems, have packed their valises.

The backdrop is this: on August 15, Trump and Putin convened at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, for a high-stakes parley over Ukraine peace terms. That meeting — historic, contested, and freighted with consequence — now stands as the lone entry in the summit ledger. Market consensus, backed by over six and a half million dollars in 24-hour trading volume, judges that no follow-on encounter will materialize in the roughly four months remaining. Whether stalled negotiations, congressional resistance, or battlefield developments have shuttered the diplomatic calendar, the bettors are not hedging.