"...Did no-one ever explain to these chumps that, unless your adversary is actually at the table, all you are doing by agreeing with each other is creating castles in the air...?"

It's puzzling...and what's even more so is the complete refusal of the media to ask about this bizarre "elephant in the room": i.e. having peace talks with yourself.

There is of course the underlying fact that they don't want peace anyway: they have staked their careers on "winning" against Ivan...but there's more to it than that. Beneath it is a refusal to admit that France & the UK are no longer world powers but mere satraps of the Yanquis and an attempt to pretend that they have some independent say, though if course all they are doing is picking up the tab for the Yanquis failure to collapse Russia by increasing their expensive gadfly activity.

The pretence of independent planning is meant to annoy Trump whom they despise, and of course keep the show going until their Democrat friends take power again, but the Trump doesn't care, as long as they pick up the tab and keep buying the overpriced guns n bombs.. and if they faced facts the Democrats won't care either as Yanqui foreign policy only changes in details between administrations and it's helpful after all because it's only the dumb Europeans and Brits taking themselves out the world equation by bankrupting themselves through old-world vanity.