The president of Ukraine and his European allies are to visit the White House on Monday, after President Trump backed Russia’s plan to end the war.

The timing of Russia’s advance is a calamity for Kyiv, which already fears its most important ally will abandon it as Trump floats exchanging territories to end the war.

“I often say that if I could do nothing else except chop for the rest of my days, I would be happy,” the chef Olia Hercules writes in “Strong Roots,” a memoir of her Ukrainian heritage that gives fresh charge to that dull old adjective “bittersweet.” “It’s meditative, it’s calming. Magical, wondrous things happen when you chop.”