From the betting floors comes a verdict as unambiguous as any this correspondent has witnessed: there will be no second Trump-Putin summit before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. Polymarket, trading on some six and three-quarter million dollars in volume within a single day, assigns the proposition precisely zero probability — a figure as rare in the prediction racket as a honest alderman. The markets have, in short, spoken in one voice.

The backdrop demands a moment's attention. On August 15th last, the two leaders convened at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska — a dramatic, if chilly, handshake over the smoldering question of Ukraine. That encounter now stands, per market consensus, as the solitary chapter in this diplomatic saga for 2025. Any fresh meeting, any separate occasion before December 31st, is priced by prediction markets at nil — a mathematical declaration that the diplomatic calendar is, for now, closed.