Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died on both sides. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, scattered across Europe. Entire regions ravaged by war lie in ruins. Ukraine’s economy is effectively on life support, dependent on foreign aid. Russia, too, faces deep losses and isolation. And yet, the war continues with only a barely flickering flame lighting up a tortuous path towards peace.

That flickering light is primarily due to the forceful actions of a new ‘peace broker’ in town, US President Trump, who is now trying to twist the arms of both sides to broker a ceasefire deal and bring the warring parties around the same table. That’s not easy! The challenge is not that peace is impossible in itself. It’s that even the possibility of peace has gradually been buried beneath the rubble of hardened ideologies, pain, losses, raw emotions, and distrust expressed in mutually exclusive narratives. The real tragedy may not just be the terrible loss of lives and territory but also the loss of the ability to see the other side as anything else than mortal enemies and hence to be unable to imagine peace with them as even a remote possibility.