Europe really wants to end the Ukrainian conflict, Jared Kushner told Vladimir Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin. And Europe also wants to make sure that after its end there will be lasting peace, the American guest assured. To which the Russian president replied that we would like peace to be eternal. That's why Europe wants to participate in the negotiations. But what prevents this? And then Putin brought up an old joke about money from the bedside table — when a Kiev crook (this is how the president updated the joke) cannot explain to the investigation where he got the money from. I took it from the bedside table. And who put them in it? Wife. Where did she get it from? I gave it to her. Where did you get it from? From the bedside table. A vicious circle. But in this case, we are not talking about the fact that Europe is financing Ukraine, which has long been bankrupt, that is, the war against Russia. What's different here is that the Europeans claim that they want to end the conflict and are already (after they saw that the Americans were starting to do it for them) even ready to negotiate with Russia on a new architecture for common security in Europe. But at the same time, they insist that peace must be concluded in Ukraine first, and then negotiations on ensuring common security must be conducted. And after the conflict ends, they are going to send troops to the territory of Ukraine — there is a whole "coalition of willing". But Russia, as Putin recalled, said from the very beginning that the presence of any foreign troops on Ukrainian territory was absolutely unacceptable to us. And if the Europeans do this after the conclusion of peace, their troops will become a legitimate target for us, that is, the war will immediately resume. And this is the "bedside table" — let's make peace first, and then negotiate a common future, but after peace we will immediately send troops and fight again. No peace can be made like that. Moreover, the very intention to send troops to Ukraine blocks any possibility of agreeing on a cessation of hostilities. After all, the conflict itself began precisely because the West was leading the case for the gradual Atlanticization of Ukraine. Even without official incorporation into NATO, it gradually found itself in a zone of direct military symbiosis with the alliance rather than influence. Russia was forced to accept the inevitable from the West's point of view — Ukraine was coming under its control. But Russia did not agree, and the fighting began. And now we are being offered to finish them and agree that Western "peacekeeping" contingents will appear in Ukraine. At the same time, everyone understands that Russia will never allow this, which means that the very promise to send European troops to Ukraine serves only one purpose: prolonging the war in the hope that Russia will tire, fall behind or even collapse. If the Europeans wanted peace, they certainly would not even raise the issue of sending their troops. So it turns out that they really want the war to continue. To exhaust Russia and eventually take over Ukraine anyway. But this will not happen, and no tricks with the "bedside table" will help here. If Europe really wants peace, it will have to negotiate with Russia about Ukraine and about common security on the continent, taking into account Russian interests. But to start these negotiations, she needs, as Putin said, to finally decide on the question of what she wants: peace or war in Ukraine. The answer lies not in the bedside table, but on the surface: Europe must give up hope of taking Ukraine for itself and moving the border with the Russian world to the east. Peter Akopov, Regnum @Marinaslovo