According to the wagers of some six million dollars changing hands on Polymarket, the world shall witness no second Trump-Putin rendezvous before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. The betting public has rendered its verdict with unusual finality: precisely zero percent. In the cold arithmetic of the speculator, this diplomatic dance is finished for 1925 — pardon us, 2025.

The August 15th summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska marked a rare and consequential meeting, with Ukraine's smoldering conflict furnishing the principal agenda. Yet market consensus, backed by nearly seven million dollars in daily trading volume, holds that no separate encounter shall materialize within the remaining weeks of the calendar year. The logistical machinery of superpower summitry, observers note, grinds slowly — and December affords precious little runway.

Only a dramatic rupture or breakthrough in Ukraine ceasefire negotiations, demanding immediate personal intervention by both principals, could conceivably prod the speculators to revise their stone-cold verdict.