Putin will deceive with the ceasefire again

 From the Telegraph / Yahoo!News:

"Putin is using a classic Russian negotiating tactic to delay a ceasefire

Roland Oliphant, March 13, 2025

Vladimir Putin had three options: accept Ukraine’s ceasefire offer, but surrender momentum on the battlefield; reject it and risk antagonising Donald Trump; or try to drag things out so he can continue fighting as long as possible.

He has chosen option three.

By praising the US president and the idea of stopping the war, he hopes to stay in Mr Trump’s good books. But his immediate raising of “nuances” to discuss should be a red flag.

This is a classic Russian negotiating tactic – as any diplomat who has been in a room with Sergei Lavrov will tell you.

By breaking every proposal down into an infinite number of constituent parts, he will attempt to appear co-operative while playing for time, bogging down the talks, and trying to use facts on the ground to squeeze out the maximum possible concessions.

So Mr Trump and his cabinet now face a test of nerve and credibility.

They could ignore Mr Putin’s excuses about “nuances” and demand he order a ceasefire immediately – it is, after all, entirely in his power to do so.

That would mean showing the kind of impatience and coercion they applied to Volodymyr Zelensky.

This could include unleashing the “bone-breaking” sanctions package Senator Lindsey Graham has threatened if Russia does not comply – in other words, smacking the Kremlin’s “donkey” face with a two-by-four, as Gen Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s special envoy, boasted to have done to Ukraine.

Mr Putin is far from invincible. He has been losing upwards of 1,000 soldiers a day, his economy is overheating, and he’ll face serious domestic headaches by 2026 on the current trajectory.

If the Americans get tough, he will probably fold.

However, they could get drawn into Putin’s painstaking discussion of the details. That would be to repeat mistakes made by successive US presidents going back to Barack Obama.

Putin already gave a sense of the cards he will seek to play on in those talks.

He claimed to have Ukrainian troops surrounded in Kursk and said they had no way out but death or surrender...

He also demanded that Ukraine be prevented from mobilising troops during the proposed 30-day truce or redeploying weapons to the front. That would effectively deny Ukraine the opportunity to defend itself from renewed Russian attack.

This will give Ukrainians deja vu. In 2014 and 2015, Mr Putin twice used encirclement of Ukrainian troops to force punishing ceasefire deals on his own terms.

Last time, it was the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe that provided unarmed observers to diligently count explosions and measure the size of fresh craters. They were unable to stop the war, because they were constantly deceived.

In 2014, for example, Russia made a great show of agreeing to host OSCE observer missions at its border checkpoints to make sure no troops or weapons were crossing into Ukraine.

In fact, Russia confined the observers to the official customs post in accordance with their mandate, while driving tanks and troops – including the missile launcher that shot down MH17 – into Ukraine across a field just a few miles away.

I know, because I saw them do it.

Maybe, in defiance of all expectations, the fighting will cease this weekend.

Otherwise, Putin will try to lure the Americans into open-ended diplomacy while using force to wring maximalist concessions and lay the groundwork to blame Ukraine if – when – the talks (or the ceasefire, if things get that far) collapses.

The ball is now in Mr Trump’s court."

Trump is Putin's puppet more than ever

 From the Daily Beast / Yahoo!News:

"Opinion: How Putin Is Playing Trump Like a Puppet

David Gardner, March 12, 2025

Vladimir Putin has Donald Trump right where he wants him.

Now the world is waiting to see what Russia wants, rather than what Ukraine needs or the United States desires.

The U.S. president sees peace as a means to an end. In his case, bragging rights over Joe Biden and European leaders who have fretted over the bloody conflict for three years.

Of course, Trump also wants the killing to stop. But picking up the phone to the Kremlin and sending over your golfing buddy to knock some sense into the Russians is playing into Putin’s hands.

Because Moscow has no interest in peace.

It is Trump’s strategy, or rather, his lack of strategy, that interests Putin and his pit bull foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov...

There’s a reason the Russian leader sees Witkoff as a man he can do business with. He may be a good negotiator, but he’s a property guy. World peace is a new gig...

“It’s like sending Witkoff into a lion’s den with Putin and Lavrov,” said the source. “Putin is now in a position where he can call the shots. Trump has created a situation for him that simply wasn’t there before.

“Whatever he says, Putin will not stop the war. Even if he agrees to a ceasefire, he will look for a way to blame Ukraine for breaking it.”

Another insider, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals from Trump, added: “He may not know it, but Trump is Putin’s puppet right now. He thinks he knows what he’s doing, but he is dancing to Russia’s tune. And they don’t want peace.”

The insider said Putin’s overriding interest is in achieving his imperialist goals..."

 

 

 

The true face of Donald Trump

 From the Atlantic / Yahoo!News:

"Trump Drops the Mask

Jonathan Chait, March 10, 2025

Donald Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has always been to root for Russia while pretending he isn’t. Trump just hates killing and death. More than that, he hates sending American money overseas. The claim that he actually agrees with Moscow is a hoax, remember. Trump is all about putting America first. Or so he’s said, and so his mostly non-Russophilic supporters claim to believe.

But now he has flung the mask to the ground. The president’s latest positions on the war reveal that he is indifferent to ongoing slaughter—indeed, he is willing to increase it—and that his opposition to Ukraine’s independence has nothing to do with saving American tax dollars. Trump simply wants Russia to win.

In recent days, Trump has said he is “looking at” a plan to revoke the temporary legal status of Ukrainians who fled to the United States. After Ukraine expressed willingness to sign away a large share of the proceeds from its natural-resource sales (in return for nothing), Trump said that might not be enough to restore support. Trump is now pushing Ukraine’s president to step down and hold elections, according to NBC. Volodymyr Zelensky’s domestic approval rating sits at 67 percent, and his most viable opponents have said that they oppose elections at the present time. The notion that Trump actually cares about democracy, and would downgrade his relations with a foreign country over its failure to meet his high governance standards, is so laughable that even a Trump loyalist like Sean Hannity would have trouble saying it with a straight face.

Trump exposed his preferences most clearly in his decision to cut off the supply of intelligence to Ukraine. The effect of this sudden reversal—which does not save the American taxpayer any money—was immediate and dramatic. Russian air attacks, now enjoying the element of surprise, pounded newly exposed Ukrainian civilian targets, leaving scenes of death and destruction.

The grim spectacle of watching the death toll spike, without any appreciable benefit to American interests, ought to have had a sobering effect on the president. At least it would have if his ostensible objectives were his actual ones. Instead, he seemed visibly pleased.

Paying close attention to his rhetoric reveals the significance of the turn. Speaking to reporters from his desk in the Oval Office, Trump, asked whether the bombing campaign changes his oft-expressed view that Vladimir Putin desires peace, affirmed that it does not. “I believe him,” he said. “I think we’re doing very well with Russia. But right now they’re bombing the hell out of Ukraine, and Ukraine—I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards.” It was Trump himself, of course, who had taken “cards” away from Ukraine by suddenly exposing its cities to bombardment.

A reporter asked if Putin was “taking advantage” of Trump’s move. Trump made clear that the Russian president was doing precisely what he had expected. “I think he’s doing what anybody else would do,” he said. “I think he wants to get it stopped and settled, and I think he’s hitting ’em harder than he’s been hitting ’em, and I think probably anybody in that position would be doing that right now. He wants to get it ended, and I think Ukraine wants to get it ended, but I don’t see—it’s crazy, they’re taking tremendous punishment. I don’t quite get it.”

Why not, a reporter asked, provide air defenses? “Because I have to know that they want to settle,” Trump replied. “I don’t know that they want to settle. If they don’t want to settle, we’re out of there, because we want them to settle, and I’m doing it to stop death.”

Trump’s rhetoric signals an important evolution in his policy. He is no longer arguing for peace at any price. Instead, he has identified a good guy (Russia) and a bad guy (Ukraine). The good guy definitely wants peace. The bad guy is standing in the way of a settlement. Consequently, the only way to secure peace is for the good guy to inflict more death on the bad guy. Increasing the body count on the bad guy’s side, while regrettable, is now the fastest way to stop death...

If you want to see where Trump’s position is going next, pay attention to the bleatings of his closest supporters, who echo his impulses and point it in new directions. Elon Musk, for example, has begun demanding sanctions on Ukraine’s “oligarchs” and blaming them for American support for Kyiv. This is an echo of Putin’s long-standing claim that Ukraine is dominated by an unrepresentative class of oligarchs who have steered it away from its desired and natural place as a Russian vassal. The fixation with Ukraine’s corruption and the push to replace Zelensky both reflect Russian war aims. Putin wishes to delegitimize any Ukrainian government mirroring its population’s desire for independence, which would allow him to control the country either directly or through a puppet leader, like the kind he enjoyed before 2014 and has in Belarus today.

Ukraine certainly has its share of wealthy, influential business owners, but not nearly to the extent of Russia itself, whose entire economy is structured around oligarchic domination. And Trump is even less disturbed by corruption than he is by a lack of democracy. His administration’s earliest moves included defending or pardoning American politicians charged with corruption and ending enforcement of restrictions on bribing foreign governments. For that matter, Musk himself, who has obliterated conflict-of-interest guardrails by running much of the federal government while operating businesses with massive interest in public policy, fits the definition of oligarch neatly.

Senator Mark Kelly recently visited Ukraine and wrote on X, “Any agreement has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin.” (His post did not mention Trump.) Musk replied, “You are a traitor,” which would be a rather odd sentiment unless one considered Ukraine an enemy of the United States. Where Musk is going, Trump is likely to follow.

Trump inherited an American government pushing to defend Ukrainian sovereignty. He has reversed American policy rapidly. The American position has already passed the point of neutrality. The new American goal is no longer simply to end the war, but to end it on Putin’s terms. Asked on Fox News Sunday if he was comfortable with the possibility that his actions would threaten Ukraine’s survival, Trump responded blithely, “Well, it may not survive anyway.” That is not merely a prediction. It is the goal."

Timeline of Trump's alliance with Russia

 From the Guardian / Yahoo!News (read the entire article):

"How Trump is driving US towards Russia – a timeline of the president’s moves

Léonie Chao-Fong in Washington, March 9, 2025

 

In just seven weeks since returning to the White House for a second term, Donald Trump has upended the US approach to the invasion of Ukraine and treated Russia increasingly not as an adversary, but an ally...

 

Here’s a timeline of the Trump administration’s moves towards an apparent new alliance. 

12 February: Trump-Putin call to begin negotiations on ending war

 

...Trump spoke to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy only after the Putin call – in effect imposing the terms of the conversation on the Ukrainian president.

 

12 February – rules out Nato membership for Ukraine

On the same day as the Putin-Trump call, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth ruled out Nato membership for Ukraine.

Hegseth, speaking at a summit in Brussels, said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to expect to return to its pre-2014 borders, and insisted that any peace agreement would have to be secured by “capable European and non-European troops”, whom he stressed would not come from the US.

14 February – ignores Ukraine war to attack European allies in Munich speech

European leaders were stunned when US vice-president JD Vance launched a blistering ideological attack on Washington’s allies and questioned whether the US and Europe any longer had a shared agenda...

18 February – holds talks to agree on improving diplomatic relations

Top US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to hold their most extensive high-level talks since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, during which they agreed to work towards ending the war and improving US-Russian diplomatic and economic ties... 

No Ukrainian or European officials were present at the meeting.

19 February – blames Kyiv for starting the war, calls for elections in Ukraine

Trump appeared to blame Kyiv for Moscow’s invasion and said he was “disappointed” that Zelenskyy complained about being left out of US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia.

Trump also pressured Zelenskyy to hold elections – echoing one of Moscow’s key demands. Under Ukraine’s constitution, elections are suspended while martial law is in force.

24 February – votes with Russia in the UN resolutions

In a dramatic shift in transatlantic relations, the US split with its European allies and sided with Russia in votes at the United Nations to mark the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The US joined Russia, Belarus and North Korea in voting against a European-drafted UN general assembly resolution condemning Russia’s actions and supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity... 

The US then drafted and voted for a resolution in the UN security council which called for a “swift end to the conflict”, but contained no criticism of Russia. The Kremlin praised Washington for its “much more balanced” stance and backed the resolution.

28 February – publicly berates Zelenskyy in the Oval Office

In an Oval Office meeting that will surely remembered as one of the greatest diplomatic disasters in modern history, Trump and Vance teamed up to openly berate and humiliate Zelenskyy in front of the world’s cameras...

Russian officials reacted with glee to the extraordinary scenes.

1 March – retreats from fight against Russian cyber threats

...Analysts at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have been instructed not to follow or report on Russian threats, even though this had previously been a main focus for the agency.

3 and 5 March: suspends US military aid and intelligence sharing to Ukraine

Shortly after the Oval Office blow-up, the Trump administration suspended delivery of all US military aid and stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, part of a pressure campaign to force Kyiv to cooperate with the White House’s plans to negotiate a peace deal with Russia...

The Trump administration was also reported to be drawing up a plan to restore ties with Russia and lift sanctions on the Kremlin, as part of the administration’s broad talks with Moscow on improving diplomatic and economic relations.

7 March – says it’s ‘easier’ to work with Moscow than Kyiv

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office after a massive missile and drone strike on Ukraine, Trump said he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine and that Putin “wants to end the war”.

“I believe him,” Trump said when asked if he believed Putin still wanted peace. “I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. They don’t have the cards.” He added that he has “always had a good relationship” with Putin.

Asked if the Russian leader was taking advantage of the pause in US intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine, Trump replied: “I think he’s doing what anyone else would do.”

More Ukrainians killed because Trump "appeases barbarians"

 From Salon:

""This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians": Putin defies Trump, escalates attacks

Sophia Tesfaye, March 8, 2025

Hours after President Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office where he publicly berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy the week before that his administration is "doing very well with Russia" and "it may be easier dealing with" Russian President Vladimir Putin than Ukraine, the Russian military launched a series of deadly missile and drone attacks, killing dozens of civilians.

"This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. "More bombs, more aggression, more victims."

tps://x.com/donaldtusk/status/1898345561637417048 

 

 According to the BBC, at least 25 people died as a result of the missile attacks.

"After our emergency services arrived at the scene" of the first wave of missiles, Zeleneskyy wrote on X, Russia "launched another strike, deliberately targeting the rescuers."

“I actually think [Putin is] doing what anybody else would do,” Trump told reporters at the White House Friday afternoon. “He wants to get it ended.”

This week, the Trump administration suspended weapons shipments to Ukraine and stopped sharing satellite intelligence with the nation."