The hero of 2022 was now the embattled statesman of 2026, navigating a peace more dangerous than the war itself.… In the sterile, high-security confines of a villa in Abu Dhabi, the air was thick with the scent of expensive coffee and the palpable tension of a continent’s future. It was February 2026, and the “Great War” had entered its most surreal phase: the guns were cooling, but the political battlefield was incinerating. The Twilight of the Frontline By early 2026, the conflict had reached a grinding, bloody stalemate. While the Kremlin still demanded the total handover of the Donbas, the reality on the ground was a jagged line of fortifications stretching through scorched earth. Ukraine still held roughly 5,000 square kilometers of the Donetsk region—fortress cities that Russia couldn’t take but Ukraine could no longer easily defend. The Corruption Crisis Back in Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelensky was fighting a second war—o...