In Sept. 2024, when Joe Biden was still in the White House, Petr Pavel told the New York Times that it was time for Ukrainians and their supporters to face reality about the prospects of recovering occupied territory. He was saying publicly what European leaders had been saying in private. He spoke about temporary Russian occupation of controlled territory and said that there were a number of examples of it. We boiled his form of appeasement down to the Pavel Doctrine: "Stand up to evil, but if evil proves too powerful, make a deal with it." Pavel carried on in this same vein in a recent BBC interview, without saying anything about needing Ukrainian approval. "If there's a cost to renewing Ukraine as an independent, autonomous state," he said, "and if the cost is to accept that part of the territory will become temporarily occupied, without recognizing it legally, then let's be it [so be it]." Donald Trump now seems to be planning just this at his summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Fri., but Pavel's European allies are strongly opposed. The Pavel Doctrine, based according to Pavel on reality, is coming face-to-face with Europe's own reality.