Kyiv residents have been sleeping better at night ever since diplomatic contact between Washington and Moscow was restored. Not because they have begun to dream of peace, imagining that it might be miraculously brokered on Friday, August 15, at a meeting between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska. It's just that their nights are no longer punctuated by the sounds of sirens and explosions from Russian projectiles.

In an attempt to placate the American president, who has been troubled by Russia's relentless strikes on civilians, Putin has paused the massive campaign of aerial offensives on the Ukrainian capital, which he had been conducting since early August. Instead, he has now begun focusing his army's bombardments on regions near the front lines, where between 50 to 160 strikes have been reported every night.

The announcement of the upcoming Trump-Putin summit has dominated the headlines of Ukrainian media outlets, though it has not sparked much hope in the country, which has been at war for the past three and a half years. The United States administration's policy reversals, ever since the billionaire Republican returned to the White House in January, as well as several diplomatic initiatives that have yielded no tangible results, have fueled growing skepticism.

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