It is hard to see that Trump would be satisfied with the anodyne lowest common denominator of a joint communiqué making requisite noises about collaboration against terrorism, deconfliction in Syria, and maybe even talks about talks on arms control. Putin, too, will no doubt push for more.

According to recent reports, Israel and other Middle Eastern allies of the United States are lobbying for Moscow to commit to pushing Iran out of Syria. Putting aside the unlikely prospect that Moscow would or even could agree to this, what on earth would be a suitable trade? For Ukraine and its friends in the West, the concern is that some kind of concession over the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 in a move the U.S. has never recognized, would be Moscow’s price.

Of course, Putin’s dream would be some kind a grand bargain, a Yalta 2.0 reminiscent of the deal at the end of World War II that carved up the globe between eastern and western spheres of influence. Something like this would give Russia a free hand in countries such as Ukraine and Georgia, and the kind of “respect” it feels it deserves and has been denied. It would be a bad deal, trading the sovereignty of those countries unlucky enough to fall within what the Kremlin openly regards its “zone of privileged interest” in the name of questionable and ultimately unenforceable guarantees for an end to meddling in Western politics and the Middle East.